The ARAS Foundation collected 538 bikes plus hundreds of bike parts at its annual drive on May 3. The items, which will support the Village Bicycle Project, are being shipped to Ghana.

Mary Trask, ARAS community service director, said they had 85 volunteers helping them at Sammamish City Hall last Saturday. Their youngest volunteer was 3.

“At around 4 p.m. we finished loading the cargo container and the extra bikes that didn’t fit were placed in three pick-up trucks,” Trask said. “They will be kept in Seattle storage awaiting the next shipment to Africa.”

Trask said this is the ninth year Sammamish has participated in a bike drive, but the Village Bicycle Project has been at it for many years. Since 1999, Village Bicycle Project has shipped more than 75,000 bikes plus thousands of bike parts to Africa, Trask said.

Once the bikes are delivered, recipients are taught basic maintenance and repair skills so they are able to maintain use.

Village Bicycle Project explains that bikes provide power and opportunity to people in Africa. “Improved mobility is a key to reducing poverty,” it says on their website. “In Africa, a bicycle can take a person from poverty to prosperity.”