Advocates from two local nonprofits – the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition and Bikes Not Bombs – will help host the annual Youth Bike Summit in the city of Boston next summer.
Since 2011, the Youth Bike Summit has been an annual three-day event that convenes hundreds of leaders and advocates from across the country for workshops and group rides that help participants advocate for healthier, more sustainable communities.
The summit's guiding principles, which include a focus on the importance of youth leadership, the power of bikes "as a catalyst for positive social change," and "the importance of a diverse, multi-cultural and equitable movement," share a lot in common with the values of the Bikes Not Bombs and the Mattapan Food and Fitness organizations, which both use bike rides and advocacy as a way to advance broader goals in public health and community development in their neighborhoods.
"At Mattapan Food and Fitness, when we think about bikes, it's how it's related to public health and physical activity; it’s also linked to identity and gender," Shavel’le Olivier, the executive director of the the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, told StreetsblogMASS last week. "So how can we come together to explore those intersections that our young people already have and are interested in?"
Olivier has been attending the Youth Bike Summit since 2016.
“I was really excited by what I saw; I was like, ‘Word, here are all the young people who are involved in cycling.' To come together to see so many young people of color was really eye-opening,” Olivier says.
Olivier says that she had started having conversations with organizers about hosting the event in Boston in 2019, but the Covid-19 pandemic put those plans on hold for a few years.
At the end of this year's conference, in Allentown, Penn., National Youth Bike Council organizers passed on a set if “golden handlebars” to Mattapan Food and Fitness and Bikes Not Bombs to ceremoniously steer next year's event towards Boston.
The 2025 Youth Bike Summit will run from May 30 through June 1, 2025, at Roxbury Community College. Organizers are actively seeking potential sponsors for the Boston event – learn more here.
