The Bicycle City: How two wheels can change the world
/Thanks to a generous donation by Better Farm's own Tyler Howe, Better Farm will be listed in the credits for
, a documentary about how bicycles transformed a war-torn community into a thriving economy.
Crippled by decades of military dictatorship, civil war, and environmental catastrophe, Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in Latin America, having one of the region’s lowest GDPs and the second highest Human Poverty Index, behind only Haiti. Economic opportunities are few and those born into the lower classes tend to remain in poverty for life.
Over the past 20 years, more than 20,000 bicycles have been brought into Rivas, a city on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, by the non-profit Pedals for Progress, which collects donated bicycles in the United States and distributes them in impoverished communities worldwide. Since the first was unloaded in Rivas in 1991, the bicycle has become an integral part of daily life.
The Bicycle City
is the story of how an idealistic experiment has helped the war-ravaged city of Rivas find its own path to recovery and normalcy through the introduction of cheap, reliable transportation in the form of the bicycle.
The film is still in its editing stages (fundraising continues for editing, translation, and production efforts), but the above trailer will give you a pretty good idea of what the project's all about.
Click here to learn more about the film and the good, old-fashioned power of bike
.
