ONBIKES AND TECO PARTNER IN PLANT CITY GIVEAWAY
Last week at Amalie arena, more than 1,000 bikes were assembled by 1,000 OnBikes volunteers. Chadwell Supply trucked 50 of these to Plant City for recipient children. These were high quality bikes—most were Schwinns. On December 16, Tampa Electric Company (TECO) partnered with OnBikes to give bicycles to kids at the West Plant City Boys & Girls Club. Along with representatives from TECO, a handful of their linemen made appearances to hand out the bikes to an excited, cheering group of children, who immediately rode around the parking lot smiling, laughing, and shouting.
OnBikes is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that raises funds to provide bikes to at-risk children, including the homeless and teens in foster care. Since its founding in 2011, OnBikes has given 18,000 free bikes to underprivileged kids.
“It is a great event put on here today by the Boys & Girls Club of Plant City,” lineman Donnie Newman said. Newman, born and raised in Plant City continued, “I am thoroughly enjoying these kids—seeing the smiles on their faces, and giving back to the community, 2024 has been a crazy year with all the storms we have had, and kind of a rough year for families. To sit here and be able to give back to the community is an absolute blessing.”
“Tampa Electric Company partnered with OnBikes and the West Plant City Boys & Girls Club to giveaway 50 bikes to kids,” TECO commented in statements about the giveaway. “TECO wanted to give a chance for the community to connect to our dedicated line workers who gave so much during the hurricanes earlier this year.” The bike giveaway presented a chance for the linemen to give the Boys and Girls Club children some fun . It demonstrated the power of partnerships between organizations like OnBikes, TECO, and the Boys & Girls Club to positively impact local families.
“To the kids, the bikes mean everything,” said Aleazea Foster, West Plant City Boys & Girls Club Director. “We have some of our kids who have never ridden a bike—they never learned how to ride a bike. Out there at the event yesterday, we had some of the TECO guys, and some of the guys from OnBikes teaching them techniques on how to balance, and how to ride a bike. Other kids were saying they hadn’t had a bike since they were little. All of their bikes were too small, so they finally have bikes their size. I think that it was a great opportunity for them to be able to see the linemen. A lot of the kids don’t get a chance to see TECO out in the community. It is important for the kids to see them because they get to see different careers and things that they could be able to do.”
Some of the kids also released their own statements:
“It’s very good! – Kaleb
“I am happy, excited, grateful, thankful.” – Shane.
“Cool!” – Damian.
“Epic!” – Joslyn.
