A student at forest lawn high school unlocks their bicycle from the indoor bike racks and rides over the school walk way to begin their ride home. Laura Shutiak’s charity, Youth En Route is promoting cycling in Calgary schools by providing bikes, riding lessons and bike security to encourage students to make active transportation choices. (Noah Laycock, CMRU.ca)
They say if something is like riding a bike, it means once you learn it, you’ll never forget it. This expression is based on the assumption that nearly everyone can ride a bike. However, Laura Shutiak surveyed students in a Calgary High School and found that only a small portion of students felt confident enough to ride a bike everywhere, and many had never ridden a bike at all.
Taking action to teach new riders
Knowing how important cycling can be as an affordable mode of transportation for young people, Laura decided to do something to make a change. In 2021, Youth En Route was created and introduced to schools as an opportunity for students who hadn’t yet learned how to ride a bike to get the necessary time, encouragement, equipment and coaching to do so. Take a look!
Expanding outreach
If you’re going to teach a lot of kids how to ride, you’re going to need a large fleet of bikes. Laura began recruiting other community organizations like a group of senior citizens who repair old bicycles at a nursing facility and donation centres to help acquire enough bikes to run a cycling class with 30 students, and then began giving away bicycles as inventory continued to grow. The program aims to provide young people with the following:
- Access to Safe Bicycles that run well
- Awareness of how to ride around traffic
- Helmets and an understanding of their importance
- Cycling etiquette and relevant equipment like reflectors and bells
- Locks, indoor bike racks, and training on how to lock a bike up
- Basic maintenance skills like tire inflation and rust prevention
Thanks to Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart program funding Youth En Route’s mission, 12 Schools in Calgary have welcomed Laura’s team onto their campuses to inspire students by reminding them it is never too late to learn something new. The Jumpstart Program is designed to promote sports and exercise to young people facing challenges stemming from poverty.
Facing big challenges with kindness
As Youth En Route got rolling faster and faster, they expanded their presence. Into special education classes whose students require more patience and attention, English as a second language classes that often have many refugee students who have a heightened sensitivity to the potential trauma of falling off a bike, and classes of children who may just be nervous and insecure to admit in front of their peers that they haven’t learned how to do something some consider ordinary or elementary. Take a look at this video of Youth En Route in action.
Breaking down barriers
Anyone can ride a bike. Forest Lawn High School Assistant Principal, Mark Anderson, rides his bike to school with a prosthetic leg nearly every day, regardless of the conditions. He claims allowing programs like Youth En Route into his school promotes physical health, mental wellbeing and reduces your impact on the environment. Anyone can ride a bike with anyone else and find common ground in the exhilaration of rolling so fast under your own power. Laura Sutiak’s program stands as a reminder that we are all connected, and that if we can rethink big issues like transportation, there are no limits to what can be re-imagined. Laura describes Youth En Route’s mission simply: “we teach [kids] how to ride a bike and it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.”
A student reporter’s reflection
While creating this story, I was so impressed with how kind to each other all of the students were and how much volunteer work has to go into creating an organization like Youth En Route and keeping it functioning efficiently enough to grow. If I were to describe my hopes for the impact this story will have, I would hope any reader would be more willing to volunteer their time to assist a not-for-profit organization like Youth-en-Route. The joy I felt while watching students teach each other the tricks they had picked up learning to ride surpassed the joy I’ve ever gotten out of a paycheque.
Furthermore, I would hope that anyone who has enough to meet their needs would open their hearts to the idea of donating to Youth En Route here. It’s a great way to improve our environmental impact and change the lives of kids in Calgary.
Finally, I hope anyone reading has developed the confidence to try anything new and the willingness to fail in front of others without feeling ashamed. Failure is an essential part of growth, and you can’t learn how to ride without falling down. So ride, and fall, and ride, and fall again. We can’t experience success without failure, and my personal failures reporting this story (audio recording input error, slow drone shots or underexposed B-roll) are actually opportunities to grow as a reporter (audio mixing and vocal enhancing opportunity, learning speed ramping opportunity, and colour correction improvement opportunity respectively). While I made some mistakes covering this subject, these mistakes are where I grew the most, so I don’t feel like they are so bad looking back. Just like the new riders who participate in Youth En Route’s cycling classes, I’m just learning too and that isn’t so bad.
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