The Village Bicycle Project

Many of us in Public Health feel particularly fortunate to be able to combine our passion with our career goals. We are artists and musicians, writers and researchers, athletes and counselors, and we each try and find our own way to blend these talents with the health interventions we develop, hoping to make the healthy choice the easy, and fun, choice. The Village Bicycle Project (VBP) is a a small organization that ships used bikes to different countries in which the average person cannot afford a car. It is a great example of blending a passion, in this case, for bicycles, with a greater public health mission, here, providing the poor with a means to travel long distances, increase their income, and better support their families.

I invite you to check out the website (http://www.pcei.org/vbp/), and use the VBP structure to develop your own intervention that uses your strengths in an effort to combat society's weakness. In Ann Arbor, there are certainly many passionate people. There are also many bikes. I invite you to consider participating in the Village Bicycle Project, and to consider using your passion for global public health to create a VBP branch at the University of Michigan.

-William Lopez