At All Bikes Welcome, their mission is to use recreational cycling to foster personal growth and meaningful community for marginalized folks through low-cost programming, education, and events. As one of the few organizations working at the intersections of race, gender, class, and ability, their number one priority is to provide equitable access to the outdoors in a safe and welcoming environment. As they continue to grow, their aim is to provide new opportunities and initiatives to support community-centric programming.

To that end, they aim to implement a gear library accessible to the public. With the implementation of a gear library, All Bikes Welcome aims to expand their programming to include beginner-friendly bikepacking trips.

Ariel is based in Austin, TX and dove headfirst into bikepacking in 2022. He is a co-leader and volunteer coordinator of Black History Bike Ride, a ride leader and safety officer at Bikes or Death and spends his time collaborating with non-profits and other BIPOC organizations around the country to provide leadership and community organizing experience.

We are thrilled to support Ariel as he builds up a gear library to begin hosting a range of beginner to intermediate trips locally in Austin, as well as collaborating with others in Texas to lead trips so that more leaders can be empowered to create spaces for people to learn about and experience bikepacking.

Founded in 2019 as the flagship program of Black Transcendence, Black Trans Bike Experience (BTBE) has grown into a Black, Trans, Womanist, and emergent community. The vision of BTBE is threefold:

1) to strengthen connections between Black, trans & queer people and their broader communities,

2) to celebrate & affirm growing Black youth, Black women, & Black Trans people, and

3) to demystify and increase access to the multi-faceted activity/sport of biking as a way to grow a lifelong sense of belonging in bike-healthy communities, and the cycling industry at large.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to support BTBE as they develop a local gear library to lead trips for the community.

Founded by Maxx Aguilar, Black Transport Project (BTP) is an initiative that organizes community events and gives away bikes to Black trans people in the Chicago area. Eligible people who do not have a bike can apply for free, then they are entered into a raffle system, and matched applicants will be paired with a bike that fits their size. Aguilar spearheaded this initiative to fix used bikes and distribute them to Black transgender individuals in the Chicago community, distributing over 65 refurbished bikes since 2020!

In the last year, BTP has focused on hosting community events and supporting new cyclists by teaching them basic mechanic skills and on-the-bike commuting skills. BTP has plans for a bikepacking retreat to introduce recipients who have demonstrated interest in bikepacking with bikes they have received from the giveaway program. As of April 2024, BTP has made headway on the Summer 2024 giveaway goals and welcomes this opportunity to include bikepacking in BTP programming for 2024-2025.

Based in St. Louis, Chanel Mitchell is a STL Regulator working with Diverse Terrain Collective to lead a 260-mile trip along the Katy Trail. The Katy trail is a frequent gravel ride that few BIPOC individuals get to experience due to the lack of educational resources, camping gear, and security feeling on the trail.  From this ride, Chanel hopes to have more frequent outings and travels with peers to do bike-packing trips in the surrounding area. Her goal is to inspire individuals to learn how to camp and attend events to increase their adventures in other states.

Her vision is to get more BIPOC folx from various communities to learn more about bike packing. As security and safety is a concern, her goal is to build a community where groups are larger in numbers and able to venture outside of St. Louis without fear. By increasing the number of people with the skills, tools, and resources to bike pack, she can increase the distance and areas they visit.

Chanel believes that breaking the status quo of what cycling, adventure touring/ riding look like, requires representation, such as myself to show up and create opportunities for others. Her goal is to be a visual representation to promote and encourage more BIPOC individuals to explore this side of cycling.

Color the Valley LLC is a Queer, BIPOC & Women-Owned outdoor guiding company based in Burlington, Vermont. They specialize in bikepacking, backpacking, and hiking trips with an emphasis on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and Queer communities.

RAR Champlain Valley is a regional chapter of Radical Adventure Riders (RAR), which encompasses the Adirondacks, NY and Northern, VT. RAR creates networks and programs to support femme, trans, women, non-binary folks and BlPOC folks in the cycling and outdoors scene.

The two groups are working together to provide build a community gear library and to have gear to help facilitate trips for their communities.

Sarah Renteria is the Youth Program Coordinator at Friends of Organ Mountains Desert Peaks (OMDP). Eloisa “Elo” Torres is a high school history teacher and sponsors the Outdoors Club on campus. They are both on the Board of Directors for Southern New Mexico Mountain Biking (SNMTB). Their focus is getting youth on bikes and on their local trails, and they both help coach an after school mountain bike clinic at Centennial High School in Las Cruces, NM.

Friends of OMDP assist in organizing the Dangerbird Adventure Ride on the Monumental Loop. The 250-mile ride spans the ~500,000 acres of Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument. This event also includes an alternate option, the beginner-friendly Safetybird – a 30-mile, one-night ride that provides an introduction to bikepacking.

The high school kids in their programs have expressed a deep and genuine interest in bikepacking. Over the past few years, they have built up a solid MTB fleet, helmets, lights, water bottles, and cages. This grant will support the group to host the Babybird, an adventure bikepacking ride with the youth in their after school program, as well as develop a community gear library and to provide their youth and community with essential bikepacking gear.

Kim is a bicycle education contractor with Avanti High School and Inner City Transit Walk N Roll, as well as a community organizer in Olympia, Washington. Kim has been working on bikes for over 3 years and has been running a twice monthly trans bike ride locally. These rides have ranged from gravel cycling to beginner mountain biking rides to skill building classes. She’s engaged with a lot of new and first-time gravel cyclists.

Kim is drawn to community building in the area due to the lack of diversity she’s seen in the outdoors in her region, and now works to create more inclusiveness and increase representation in the outdoor and cycling communities. Kim is currently working on a burgeoning gear library and sees this as a path to their next steps of facilitating other outdoor events, classes, bikepacking and camping trips, and a myriad of guided adventures.

Olive (they/them) is a community organizer and environmental advocate living in Olympia, WA on the unceded land of the Coast Salish Peoples. Olive’s love for the outdoors began in childhood and blossomed into a passion for backpacking and biking as an adult, thanks to friends who generously shared their knowledge and gear.

They believe in the transformative power of nature and work to remove barriers to outdoor recreation by leading hiking trips, skillshares, and co-facilitating a gear lending library. In their free time, Olive enjoys ceramics, gardening, and foraging for mushrooms. They are passionate about mutual aid, harm reduction, and trans joy.

The Outdoor Inclusion Coalition (OIC) is an organization based in Pittsburgh, PA focused on supporting the outdoor exploration of underrepresented community members through free and minimal-cost resources, activities, and events such as skiing, snowboarding, climbing, and camping. They’ve partnered with local bike shops to facilitate community rides on the Great Allegheny Passage, experiencing a growing interest in multi day rides and multi activity trips like riding the GAP to Ohiopyle, camping, and climbing before returning to Pittsburgh. They’d like to support the community in this effort while adding the bike-packing gear to a gear library for community members to utilize at their will and expand the offerings we can provide to public schools and community bike groups.

In addition to the utilization with the immediate Pittsburgh community, the OIC is partnering with Boyz N the Wood to host a black men’s retreat for 12 participants, September 16-22 featuring a GAP and C&O Canal trail ride to Washington, DC, with a group of men, utilizing bike-packing as a restorative space for black men to heal and forge connections with other black men, nature, and themselves.

A coalition of bicyclists representing four grassroots groups rooted in the Southern California region. This coalition works to create access and cultivate community connectedness in their neighborhoods through bicycling, social ecology, and art.  Their goal is to create a regional, mobile bikecamping gear library and to mobilize the library throughout the region.

Cumbia Bike Club is a decolonial and anti-imperialist bike collective of and for BIPOC femmes, gender-expansive, and queer folks to reclaim their power and feel safe riding in urban spaces through music and art. They formed out of the need to foster safe and welcoming bike rides with a message of using bikes as a tool for collective liberation in intersectional movements.

LA VACAcicleta: Based in the San Fernando Valley since 2021, Los Angeles Valley Arts and Community Alliance mission is to mobilize resources and amplify expressions of system impacted populations through a multidisciplinary approach to media arts and education. Rooted in mobility justice, they travel with their cargo bike and take up public space to connect and build community in the San Fernando Valley.

Radical Adventure Riders (RAR) – Southern CA Chapter: The Southern California chapter joined RAR in 2023, with core groups in San Diego and the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. They are dedicated to creating space for BIPOC women, Queer and Trans folks interested in beginning their journey cycling in the outdoors.

Roots In Motion: Their mission is to foster intergenerational health and resilience through diverse ancestral wisdom. Their educators are deeply rooted in Los Angeles and believe in the power of peer education in building community and access to the outdoors. This approach underlines their commitment to providing culturally relevant services that resonate with BIPOC communities and instill empowered everyday solutions.

Based in the DMV area, Tia is a WABA instructor, league certified cycling instructor, and a member of Black Women Do Bike DC and DIVA Cycling. Her inspiration for building community around bikepacking is to enhance accessibility for individuals of color, noting that education, cost and exposure are the biggest barriers for individuals. In addition, she wants to create a safe space that allows others to share, heal and grow as individuals. She believes that by providing opportunities for others will enhance the demand for experiences. Within her community, she knows that advocacy is the founding principle to inform others and improve demand.

Tia is starting a local gear library with plans to lead 3-5 overnight bikepacking trips over the next few months to allow individuals to get experience bikepacking without the pressures associated with longer trips and with the aim of providing meaningful positive experiences for folks to learn appropriate skills and build confidence.

Wild Wolf Cycling Collective (WWCC) is an intentional space for women and gender-expansive riders in Los Angeles County and surrounding communities, focused on expanding pedal-powered access to the outdoors and nature. Given that Los Angeles is a diverse city with primarily BIPOC residents, WWCC strives to center the leadership and vision of BIPOC women and gender-expansive folks to address the historical harm that has excluded these riders and contributed to the “nature gap”—a phenomenon where BIPOC residents have had the least access to nature, including parks and preserves. By offering low-to-no cost entry into the world of bikepacking, WWCC continues to build community and create opportunities to access natural spaces via bicycle. We’re delighted to support WWCC in adding bikes to their extensive gear library, removing the largest cost barrier, enabling them to offer programming at no cost to the most marginalized riders in their community.

Xanich is is an emerging tribe nurturing land through an indigenous lens of reciprocity & gratitude. Members of Xanich have come together to conserve and enhance flora, fauna, land and collective biographies for future generations. Their tribe is intergenerational, they represent various places across Abya Yala and the world, and their gender and sexuality expression is rich with diversity. Xanich is starting a gear lending library with plans to offer two branches of bikepacking tours, Spirit Bicycle Runs and Educational Metal Buffalo Journeys.