More than half of its employees are women and for every bike sold, one is given to a schoolchild to help that child save time getting to school.
\nBernice Dapaah calls bamboo \u201ca miracle plant\u201d, because it grows so fast and absorbs carbon. But it can also work wonders for children\u2019s education and women\u2019s employment \u2013 as she\u2019s discovered.
\nBamboo is abundant in her native Ghana, where she runs a social enterprise that employs women to transform it into bicycles which are exported all over the world.
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\nCycling is well known as being a low-carbon form of transport \u2013 but Dapaah is making it even more sustainable.
\nFor every bamboo plant that is cut down to make a bike, Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative plants 10 more. Bamboo is stronger than steel in terms of tensile strength and is a cheaper, more sustainable material. It also takes less electricity to make a bamboo bike than a metal one. And the frame is completely recyclable.
\nThese are the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities.
\nImage: Statista
\n\u201cThe reason we use bamboo to manufacture bicycles is because it\u2019s found abundantly in Ghana and this is not a material we\u2019re going to import,\u201d says Dapaah, one of the World Economic Forum\u2019s Young Global Leaders.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a new innovation. There were no existing bamboo bike builders in our country, so we were the first people trying to see how best we could utilize the abundant bamboo in Ghana.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporting students
\nBesides encouraging Ghanaians to swap vehicles for affordable bikes, Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative is helping students save time on walking to school so they have more time to learn.
\nEach time they sell a bike, they donate a bike to a schoolchild in a rural community, who might otherwise have to walk for hours to get to school.
\nDapaah knows how transformative a shorter journey to school can be to academic performance. She grew up living with her grandpa, a forester in a rural part of the country.
\n\u201cWe had to walk three and a half hours every day before I could go to school. He later bought me a bike, so I finished senior high and wanted to go to university.\u201d
\nThe experience inspired her to launch Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative with two other students at college.
\n\u201cWhen we started this initiative, I looked back and said, when I was young, I had to walk miles before I could get to school, and sometimes if I was late, I was punished.
\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t we donate bikes for students to encourage them to study and so they can have enough time to be on books.\u201d
\nTo date, they have sold more than 3,000 road, mountain and children\u2019s bikes \u2013 and Dapaah says they plan to donate 10,000 bikes to schoolchildren over five years.
\nEmpowering women
\nThe enterprise is also providing local jobs. It teaches young people to build bikes, particularly women and those in rural communities, where jobs can be scarce. More than 50% of people they have trained are women.
\nDapaah says they want to boost the number of people they employ to 250 over the next five years and they are looking to partner with NGOs to build a childcare facility so mothers can continue to work.
\nReducing emissions
\nBy promoting a cycling culture in Ghana, Dapaah says they\u2019re also committed to reducing emissions in the transport sector and contributing to the UN\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals.
\n\u201cI love the idea of reusing bamboo to promote sustainable cycling. People want to go green, low-carbon, lean-energy efficient,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than half of its employees are women and for every bike sold, one is given to a schoolchild to help that child save time getting to school. Bernice Dapaah calls bamboo \u201ca miracle plant\u201d, because it grows so fast and absorbs carbon. But it can also work wonders for children\u2019s education and women\u2019s employment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[15180,15240],"supplier":[3416],"class_list":["post-77479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bamboo","tag-lowcarbon","supplier-world-economic-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77479"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=77479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}