The department of Dogon Doutchi is made up of 10 communes with one middle school in each of them at least. Many schoolboys and schoolgirls come from remote villages; some of them are as far as 10 kms from the school. So Tarbiyya Tatali made the choice to make bicycles available for these young people
Sourcing and shipping the bikes
One group of AECIN members took care of the information campaign and the collection of second-hand bicycles, organising a charity lottery. More than 700 bicycles were gathered and 350 were shipped in a container on May 9, 2007. The container arrived in June at Dogon Doutchi. Spare parts were added to the container, 160 new tyres in various sizes, 10 sets of 3 tyre levers, 10 pumps, 210 inner tubes and 20 sets of various spanners. All these spare parts were financed with a subscription and will be used to equip the workshops.
Training and Setting up workshops
In Niger, two professional bicycle mechanics will train twenty or so young people to repair bicycles. These young people come from all the communes of the department. At the end of the training session each trainee will get a toolkit to repair the bicycles enabling him to set up shop as a bicycle mechanic. This training will take place in the Community Development Training Center .
To perpetuate this initiative
Each commune will have a stock of bicycles under the control of a management committee. A general assembly of school parents will establish the allocation process of the bicycles (rental, sale, leasing). Maintenance and replacement of the bicycles is paid for by the profits made from the rentals and the sales of the bicycles.
The second shipping
A second container arrived on February 16th 2008, which brings to 600 the number of bicycles sent through the operation. This second shipping was made possible by numerous donations and subsidies, (notably from the Cesson-Sévigné town council).
Community development Centers
The arrival of 500 bicycles collected in France gave an opportunity to set up in the nine rural towns in the Dogon Doutchi Département, Community Development Centers dealing with maintenance and agriculture...
