The people of the Eastside have once again demonstrated their ability to mobilize for a good cause.

On Saturday afternoon, 116 volunteers and countless other generous locals donated, packed up and shipped away upwards of 900 bikes for the ARAS Bike Drive for Africa.

The Bike Drive is becoming a popular annual event, staged by a Sammamish-based nonprofit aiming to increase employment, commerce and educational opportunities for villagers in Africa. In this effort, ARAS have partnered with the nonprofit organization The Village Bike Project.

For the past four years, ARAS, which stands for Affection, Respect, Acceptance, Support, has seen the donations of bikes from Sammamish transform the lives of hundreds of Ghanaians. By reducing the time it takes to cover the immense distances of their country, the villagers have more time for farming, work, and school.

For the past few months, ARAS been collecting bikes, and on Saturday a huge team of volunteers came together at Sammamish City Hall to break them down into transportable sizes and get them ready for shipping.

“The bike drive was very successful and we couldn’t be happier with the results,” said ARAS founder Mary Trask. “Two Men and A Truck from Redmond graciously donated their time and brought the pre collected bikes that were being stored at Doug and Heidi Hodges house. The Redmond Rotary donated around 150 bikes to this drive and 2 Men and A Truck picked up those bikes for us as well. We had many volunteers who also spent their time driving around the eastside picking up bike donations as far away as Preston. We are so fortunate to have a community that supports this drive through volunteer efforts and donations and, as always, we heard many wonderful stories from donors regarding the history of their bikes.”

For more information about ARAS, visit www.arasfoundation.org.