The Idaho Inmates Building Bikes for Syrian Refugees

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The Idaho Inmates Building Bikes for Syrian Refugees
Tess Strokes

It’s a late May afternoon at the South Boise Women’s Correctional Center (SBWCC), a minimum-security center on an empty stretch of road in the sage-covered hills outside the Idaho city. Jessica Halbesleben, a 45-year-old inmate, meets with her three apprentices, Destiny, Robin, and Jamie (who asked to have their last names withheld), in the unit where she’s been living for the past three years. Under Halbesleben’s guidance, the trio—ranging in age from 24 to 36—check out bike tools in the prison’s lobby, then walk across the parking lot to a shed built specifically to give them a space to repair children’s bikes.

The women are part of a 200-person program called Shifting Gears that has inmates repairing bikes for donation. In exchange for their work, they get their own bike, helmet, lock, and light, which they can pick up upon release. Halbesleben has built 66 bikes since she joined Shifting Gears in the summer of 2016, just a few months after it was launched by the Boise Bicycle Project (BBP), a nonprofit whose goal is to get everyone in the city—no matter their income—on two wheels.

“It’s the putting it back together that I fell in love with,” Halbesleben says. “For me, it was a Zen experience. You get this bike that’s all dirty and rusty and has flat tires. You take something that’s broken and turn it into something that looks brand new.”

Read more at:  https://www.outsideonline.com/2362956/idaho-inmates-building-bikes-syrian-refugees