As part of the school’s annual Day of Service and Learning, seven students from East Williston’s The Wheatley School helped load more than 120 donated bicycles into a box truck to begin their journey to rural Costa Rica.
This bicycle donation is part of a long-term fundraiser started by former science teacher Steve Finkelstein. Since the 1990s, Mr. Finkelstein and his Environmental Action Committee began collecting bikes for what he called Afri-Bike. In 2000, he journeyed to Kopeyia, Ghana to deliver 200 bicycles to a school there. The donated bicycles are used to get children to and from school, or to transport goods and services that families need to survive. Since then, Mr. Finkelstein and generations of Wheatley students have donated more than 3,500 bicycles to those in need.
This year, Mr. Clarke and his School Within a School students sought to donate the bikes that Mr. Finkelstein had collected before retiring. And, those bikes were supplemented by the bikes collected by Justin Doan, Wheatley Class of 2023, as part of his Eagle Scout Project. This year, they partnered with Bikes for the World which will deliver them to people in Costa Rica who also need ways to get to school and to transport goods. In addition to this remarkable achievement, Mr. Finkelstein has left the school with the legacy of the container where the bikes were stored. Moving forward, this space will hold more bikes and be utilized by the technology department as a space for technology to expand and try new things. The students involved were, Jordan Fitoussi, Gavriel Hen, Dylan McCauley, Nathaniel Mulqueen, Will Sellerberg, Alex Smith and Manav Trivedi.
Photo caption: As part of the school’s annual Day of Service and Learning, seven students from East Williston’s The Wheatley School helped load more than 120 donated bicycles into a box truck to begin their journey to rural Costa Rica.
Photos courtesy of East Williston School District
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