The project aims to raise young people’s awareness regarding the importance of leading an active life by practicing sports and, in this case, riding the bike in most of daily situations.
The ideas
In our area quite a few people use the bike as a means of transport. Within the city most of the people use their own cars or public transportation which, unfortunately, cause excessive pollution.
Nowadays, young people have replaced sports with computer games or other static activities and according to scientific studies, such young people are suffering more from medical problems than previous generations.
This attitude of the younger generation has some causes such as:
• The lack of an efficient policy which informs and presents the advantages of practicing such a sport both in the cities and on mountain itineraries;
• The absence of enough bike rent centres;
• The poor condition of bicycle-specific infrastructure, more exactly the lack of enough tracks which offer the cyclists safe conditions for riding;
• The lack of enough bike parking spots.
This project aims to raise students’ awareness regarding riding the bicycle, understanding the advantages of such an activity and encouraging them to use the bike as much as possible in their daily life.
What we want our students to understand is that life can definitely be more beautiful and especially healthier if they ride their bike on their way to school, into the mountains, in the parks and, of course, with friends.
The initiatives
The project had as a starting point the debate organised with the students on the theme: ‘The Bike – Present and Future’.
‘Cars and Bike – co-participants in traffic’ was a round table discussion where the initiators of the project established the main targets of the project by introducing the most interesting ideas of the project.
The working plan was discussed and each participant in the project was assigned a specific task.
Promoting bike riding was a successful action that was realised within most of the groups of students from our school.
The action ‘Let’s go for a ride in the city’ was especially welcomed by the students from ninth and eleventh grades who wanted to promote the benefits of riding the bike.
The high number of students participating in this bike ride, the fact that they were accompanied by the principal of the school who was riding his own bike, as well as the involvement of the ecologist organisation Eco Green City proved that our project had an important impact upon our school.
