Prodigal Bikes Home Page
Prodigal Bikes - Sending bikes to Africa
Prodigal Bikes is a charity that brings hope and changes lives in both Africa and the UK.
Why “Prodigal” Bikes? In the Bible, Luke Ch. 15 vs 11-32 is a story Jesus told about a father who welcomes his wayward (Prodigal) son back into his family, giving him a second chance in life.
In the UK we refurbish bikes donated to us, teaching engineering skills and giving work experience to those who need that second chance. These bikes are then either shipped to Africa or given to refugees and asylum seekers here in the UK.
In Africa our bikes are used by patients to access healthcare, and by school children and teachers to get to schools. We also provide tools, spare parts and training to keep the bikes working.
Please browse our website to see what we do, who we help and how you can get involved.
HOW COULD YOU HELP?
We are a non-profit organization, and rely on volunteers and donations to help us make a difference to people’s lives. If you would like to volunteer, make a donation or organise a charity event please get in touch we’d love to hear from you.
Latest Prodigal Bikes News
Another big thank you, this time to Sid and James from K S Electics who kindly wired in our new Infra Red heaters free of charge. During the colder months, our workshop does get a bit chilly, to put it mildly (the water in the kettle froze one morning) so we, and all our students, are very grateful.![]()
Thank you too to the volunteers at Leonardo Helicopters who raised some money for us as part of their Be A Saint Day back in the spring. We used this to buy one of the heaters.
Today, we say a big Thank You to Titan Containers. Titan are a global company with headquarters in Denmark. They specialise in the rental and sale of shipping containers. They also have a strong charitable ethos, with a great Corporate Social Responsibility scheme. Our team lead in Eldoret, Kenya, George Okoth, found out about this, so we applied and they gave us this 40ft Hi-Cube container. We will use this to store bikes in at our UK base before dispatch to Africa, freeing up loads of space in our workshop.
Love this. Out on the trails in Tanzania with school kids riding home on our bikes.
As we take a pause from our teaching work over the summer holiday, time to share some updates on how our various projects are going.![]()
But first, we must say several big thank yous -![]()
To Judith Brookes and her friends for their support as part of Judith's birthday celebrations.![]()
To the League of Friends of Crewkerne Hospital for their generous donation.![]()
To the Marsh Charitable Trust for their grant towards our core funds.![]()
To all those people who have donated bikes to us. We have a really healthy supply now!![]()
To everyone who has bought a high value bike from us, to help fund our projects. ![]()
To our volunteers, who meet at our workshop every Thursday and keep preparing our bikes come rain or shine, hot or cold.![]()
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Here, we had a great time teaching a variety of students from The Hub, The Horizons Therapeutic Trust and Wadham School, who have all learned lots of transferrable skills as they prepared bikes for our next shipment to Kenya. We now have around 160 bikes ready for this, towards our target of 360 bikes. These bikes will help children in two areas of Kenya; Homa Bay by Lake Victoria, and Kitui County, North Eastern Kenya, next year. ![]()
We look forward to resuming with all these groups and Yeovil College in September. ![]()
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Meanwhile, in Tanzania, our team from the Community Life Empowerment Foundation, Robert, Ruth, Idd and Mussa are doing a great job keeping a fleet of 250 bikes working from their container workshop we set up last December. The four schools we supplied all report definite increases in attendance, prompt arrival at school and academic performance. ![]()
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In Kenya, our team - Mbiti, Joshua and Elijah look after the aging fleet of bikes, fitting spares from our supplier, Benjamin in Nairobi. ![]()
Their next container of bikes and spares can't come soon enough.![]()
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In Malawi, a Hooke Court in Malawi in Malawi visited for 2 weeks recently. The 188 bikes supplied so far are nearly all working, serviced by mechanics Christopher, Simon and Louis. The bikes continue to make a massive difference for the teachers, allowing them to reach far away schools so much more easily. We heard of some teachers walking 4 hours to a remote school, leaving at 4am. With our bikes they now get a lie in until 6am!![]()
Simon and Louis are graduates from the Bandawe School for the deaf. They trained there as bike mechanics over the past three years. We set them up with mechanics bikes, they now are doing a great job keeping all the teacher's bikes running, and have their own businesses as a result. No small achievement. ![]()
At the hand over of a new clasHooke Court in MalawiCourt in Malawi, the Head of Zonal District Schools thanked us for the increase in punctuality the bikes have made for the teachers in the Bandawe and Chintheche zones. ![]()
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As well as all this, we've supplied about another 50 bikes to newly arrived refugees around Somerset, giving them vital access to education, employment and shopping as they rebuild their lives in the safety of the UK. ![]()
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Check out the video in our next post, from Mpiji school in Tanzania, where the kids use our bikes to cover the long distances to school each day. So good to see it all in action!
Some lovely feedback from Malawi today, where we have a bike project with the Hooke Court in Malawi charity. ![]()
Back in September last year, one of our trainees, Jake, refurbished this old Ridgeback mountain bike. We added panniers filled with bike tools.![]()
We also got an old wheelchair, found in the scrap metal skip by our workshop and Jake refurbished that, too.![]()
And one of our volunteers, Steve Carden, fixed up a Universal Fusion mountain bike. ![]()
With help from Changing Stars Malawi , the Zikomo Trust, and the Coles-Medlock Foundation, we got all these delivered to Malawi as part of a 60 bikes plus tools and spares shipment at the start of this year. ![]()
The Ridgeback bike went to Simon, who recently left the Bandawe School for the Deaf after training there as a Bike mechanic. In a country with very high unemployment, any disability makes employment even more difficult. The bike meant Simon, who is deaf himself, could start work around the area where we have delivered just under 190 bikes to school teachers. He now rides around this area repairing the bikes which the teachers use to get to school. We hear "Simon is really doing a great job. He goes around the zones checking the bikes that need a fix apart from helping on the all the days we're open at the station. Teachers from remote areas have commended him for his dedication."![]()
For the wheelchair, it is making getting to Bandawe Primary school for one Grace Banda a whole lot easier.![]()
For the Universal Mountain Bike: "(This bike has been given to) the Learning Difficulty resource centre at the same school. It will enable the teacher managing the resource to reach other schools in the zone when conducting screening and monitoring exercises for learners with diverse needs."![]()
Not a bad result for three items destined for the recycling skip.