286,973yen

This is a project to put smiles on the faces of children who survived the recent earthquake/tsunami disaster, through mountain bikes.

• We will provide two elementary schools and one middle school in Utatsu region with MTBs, and the schools will rent the MTBs to their students.
• Not only children will use the bikes for commuting to school daily, we will organize MTB lessons and other fun events so they will discover just how fun mountain biking is.
• We want to help the Mt.Tatsugane MTB race to take place again, which was supposed to happen on May 8 this year for the 17th time. (It was obviously canceled because of the disaster)
• In the future, our big goal is help the region get active again to revitalize and stimulate local economy by organizing events of various outdoor activities, not just mountain biking.

Plan

• Making a solid project plan with the local people and mountain bike companies.
• Building mountain bikes with the local MTB shop owners and volunteers
• Conducting lessons to teach children how to fix flat tires and basic riding techniques
• Creating a place (pump track) where kids can play at any time
• Conducting MTB riding lessons regularly
• Mt. Tatsugane MTB Race – where kids can also race

You Can Support Our Project

• Funds we will need to make this project come to reality →　We’ll be running fund raising campaign so please help us then
• Volunteers who can build bikes, teach children how to fix flat tires and riding techniques
• We work as volunteers and help the town to restore
• Other supports (as they come up)

Kunihiko Mamiya – “Mamiken”

Mountain Bike Pro-Free Rider. He organizes & runs MTB school and extreme MTB events like the water jump… quite unique kinda guy in the industry. He’s most passionate about this project among the three of us. He’s also good at river fishing, kayaking, backcountry skiing, and catching insects!

Kaori “Kay” Waki – “Wakki” or “Kay”

An Adventure Racer in Team EAST WIND and works at an IT company in Tokyo. She loves the nature, and all kinds of outdoor sports. Lived in the Philippines and the US in the past. She’s the Genki Bilingual Girl of this project.

Yoshiyuki Sato – “Yocchan”

A professional videographer who specializes in filming outdoor activites, and he’s also an ex pro-Adventure Racer. He’s got the passion for all kinds of the outdoor activities, especially bicycles. He endeavors to make this project come to real, as this project has been forming itself through networking with people.

His website: www.yingen.com

Our Policy

We support the Tsunami victims in the ways that they are able to take one step forward on their own will and power. We are not rich, we are just another ordinary people. We will be reaching out for support to friends, by sharing the burdens and sympathy, and put them all into action.

The mountain bikes will be distributed to the three schools in the Utatsu area and the students will be able to borrow the bikes from the schools. Borrowing the bikes in this way will allow the students to continuously use the bikes even after they have out grown them, so the bikes can then be enjoyed by the school’s students over a long period of time.

There are total of 434 students and 50 teachers!
It would be most idea if there all get a bicycle, however, students in the middle high school are deeply involved in club activities after class, and only students older than 4th grade are permitted to commute on bicycles in the elementary schools.
So, as a start, we aim to get bikes for about 130 over 4th graders (1/2 of all elementary school children), and this shall be our first phase target.

We’ve been discussing and working with the local people in Utatsu but we’re not looking for “fairness” like the Administration does things.
We know this is kind of biased, but hey, we decided to make it happen for our self-satisfaction after all.

The goal of Phase 1 of this project shall be restoration of the Mt.Tatsugane MTB Race in May 2012.

• There still are too much rubbles on the streets that it is not safe enough for many of the children to commute by bicycles.
• As a start, we’ll try to get a few bikes only, and aim to get 35 bikes total for a class. So we are able to conduct bike lessons for a class.
  
  (Update on April 28 – 2 x 24inch MTBs and 2 x cross bikes)

Confirmed on April 23, 2011

Steps to Our Goal

1. Making a solid project plan with the local people and mountain bike companies.
2. Building mountain bikes with the local MTB shop owners and volunteers
3. Conducting lessons to teach children how to fix flat tires and basic riding techniques
4. Creating a place (pump track) where kids can play at any time
5. Conducting MTB riding lessons regularly
6. Mt. Tatsugane MTB Race – where kids can also race

Why “Utatsu” ?

That’s where we ended up when we were searching and wanting to find out what we can do to help the victims, through what we are best at doing and have passion for – outdoor activities. And mountain biking is one of them.Then we met a teacher of Isatomae Elementary school, Mr.Masahito Abe, who shared the same vision and dream… and so on. So, Utatsu just happened to be convenient for us and we favored it.

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