Tag: youth

2025 Awards At The Youth Bike Summit

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Author: Youth Bike Summit

Invest In Women’s Entrepreneur scholarship

This year, the National Youth Bike Council worked with select Earn-A-Bike organizations to nominate a young woman for the Invest in Women’s Entrepreneur scholarship. This award is given to a young woman that “goes above and beyond, demonstrating proactiveness and leadership qualities in their bicycle program or community.” This award is funded by Invest In Women’s Entrepreneurs and gives the recipient a scholarship to attend the Youth Bike Summit.

The 2025 Invest in Women’s Entrepreneur scholarship was awarded to Kayla Edwards, a high school student living near D.C., on June 1st.

Kayla spends her time representing the powerful impact cycling has had on Black youth in Washington, DC through her work at Pedalheads, a youth bike camp. She is also a member of Prime Ability, an organization dedicated to uplifting Black youth through cycling and promoting healthy lifestyles as positive outlets for teens from challenging backgrounds. After learning about her nomination, she happily mentioned a moment that has stuck out to her in her work: “I was helping a young kid who believed biking wasn’t for him. He’d never seen anyone who looked like him doing it as a young black kid. He was nervous and didn’t even want to try but I talked with him, taught him step by step [how] to build his confidence. When he finally rode on his own, the pride on his face said everything. That moment reminded me why representation matters and why I do this work. At the end of the day I encouraged him to tell his friends and stuff. With the lead of Coach Clark, we were also able to go to Hart Middle School to build bikes to kick off their Riding for Focus Program.”

Kimberly and Kristi award

The National Youth Bike Council introduced and nominated a young person for the first ever Kimberly and Kristi award that would be presented at the Youth Bike Summit in 2025. The award is in honor of Kimberly White and Kirsti Manco, two young ladies who were pivotal to the start of the Youth Bike Summit movement. The Kimberly and Kristi award celebrates dedication, passion, and taking initiative for a young person, a team, or an organization whose work creates or has the potential for positive change that impacts a community of people the award-winner belongs to.

The 2025 Kimberly and Kristi award was presented to Allan Feldman, a college student at Brandeis University, located near Boston Massachusetts.

Allan’s nomination recognizes his contributions to Brandeis University through a small team of students that planned to revive a sustainable lifestyle on campus through a bicycle share initiative. Allan has also been outspoken and actively engaged with his local bicycle coalition both on and off campus, working to increase road safety of all road users. When receiving the award Allan mentioned his biggest personal project to us. “My biggest personal project has been working to get a bicycle share program on campus, similar to other universities in the Massachusetts area like Tufts and Wellesley.”

What It Feels Like To Be New To The Bicycle Space

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We try to spotlight youth ages 24 or younger, but Raven, who is currently employed with the League of American Bicyclists, is a recent 25-year-old and the youngest staff member on the daily team. In addition, Raven is also fairly new to the bicycle advocacy space and, believe it or not, she got a chance to participate in her first lobbying session through the National Bike Summit!

Since this was Raven’s first time attending the National Bike Summit (Bike Summit 22) as a staff member, her experience was divided between attending sessions and facilitating others. On top of that, Bike Summit 22 had multiple ways to attend: “It was a love-hate relationship with being able to meet advocates and attend sessions in-person but also balancing attending virtually while taking on the responsibilities of being an admin for the event,” Raven expressed. “I left this year’s Summit knowing that there were still many conversations for me to listen in on and so many more advocates to meet next year.”

Raven was the facilitator for our presentation, where we spoke about how stigma, law enforcement, and infrastructure played into preventing the expansion of urban cycling. She kicked us off and had some great feedback at the end of the presentation: “The topic was really relevant and relatable.”

Other presentations that sparked her interest as a first-time attendee and admin were a presentation on how to encourage local businesses to apply to the Bicycle Friendly Business program and conversations around finding new community spaces to encourage people to ride bikes. Right on point, because she was trying to gain confidence for riding a bicycle to the National Bike Summit in D.C. for the first time. Raven described the journey as a scary, but fulfilling experience, noting that Bicycle Friendly Communities and the topics around expanding infrastructure appealed to her as someone with little to no experience riding in an urban environment.

“The presentation was easy to digest and was broken down very well. Also, no one presented a game at the end of their presentation like what I saw the National Youth Bike Council’s presentation do!” – referring to our version of ‘finding Waldo’. The game was short and sweet and may still be available if you take a look at what participants had to do to win!

Raven mentioned, “I was trying not to lose my ‘host face’ even though I agreed with a lot of what you all were saying.” She goes on to say that statistics aren’t just numbers when it comes to law enforcement. Saying that before she joined the League of American Bicyclists she was not aware of the statistics, but she knew enforcement was an issue from her own personal experience, “it’s good to hear that the stats are not just stats, they are reality.”

“I did not think people could be so angry and resentful towards people on bicycles,” this statement is a common theme among the youth community the Council is boosting and was included by Raven in her feedback to us about the presentation. She also mentioned how she was pretty disconnected from the whole movement in general before joining the League, but not on purpose. Raven was more of a walker and learning about all the notions around bicyclists was an enlightening moment at our presentation and throughout the experience of the National Bike Summit, this makes the reason behind her day-to-day work stronger.

Actually, she did not learn to ride a bicycle until the age of 24, which is a fun fact. She also pointed out that if she had not been embarrassed to tell her friends she did not know how to ride a bike, she would have given the bicycle a chance sooner. She believes that riding bicycles together removes a portion of the fear a younger rider may experience riding alone in the city, “just one other person was enough to get me to ride.”

As said by her team, Raven’s service is a great addition to the team because she has not been exposed to the bicycle space before and brings a fresh and younger perspective. Through facilitated connections and conversations we hope many of the youth in this growing community can get opportunities and be essential to the bicycle space like Raven.

We thank the League for giving us a great experience at the National Bike Summit this year! Happy Bike Month!

Cross Youth Leaders With Bicycles – This Is What You Get

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Age is just a number? That is something that Council members Lot, Joshua, and Job will stand by once again, in reference to leadership, as they lead their peers in the Philadelphia region into fun bicycle activities this year.

Independence Youth Cycling along with two other organisations partnered with the National Youth Bike Council to host Spring Things. Spring Things is a flexible game that the Council members made to engage with different bicycle clubs, groups, and programs that adds an additional layer of fun to the program or pre-season activity by rewarding youth participation or leadership. Spring Things is all about having fun on your bicycle and getting rewarded for it – Maris will tell you!

Maris, a youth mountain biker with Independence Youth Cycling, is leading Spring Things in the Greater Philadelphia area with the Council. Maris alongside a few of her peers have worked to launch a Mountain Bike Bingo board (below) that has a list of activities that encourage each other to ride before the season officially starts. You can “ride a bicycle with a friend” or “ride to school or work” for starters. Riders have had access to the board since April 5th and will have the opportunity to submit completed board items until about the first week of May.

While putting the board together, Maris stated a few of her hopes for the outcome of Spring Things. “Off-season training and fun, hoping to have more interaction between members during off season times and away from race-related activities.” She firmly believes that “there are a lot of really helpful and great people in the bicycle community. The cycling community is amazing.” It’s clear that she is the embodiment of leadership and carries the bonus of having made this event possible for her peers, making her a great youth leader on her team.

The photo above is the group getting together to help finalise the event before it launched in April. We are excited to see what comes out in May!

As the planners, we used Discord to coordinate the event, a chat that you can join right here to watch others ride along and complete the challenges. Maris mentioned that she “loved seeing [the] council interact within the discord platform. Specifically, the casual conversations evolved around non-council activities.”

Above, you can see the prizes that come along with participation – ranging from a brand new National Youth Bike Council Jersey to some wrist bands and stickers!! The most rewarding of all is getting out and getting on your bicycle!

National Youth Bike Council is a youth-led non-profit organisation established in 2017 with a mission to provide an active learning space for young cyclists to boost youth voice in the bicycle industry through peer leadership.

Learn more about Independence Youth Cycling – See The Bingo Board While It’s Still Live