Recap of BikePGH's 2019 Slow Roll Season

Recap of BikePGH’s 2019 Slow Roll Season

Hey all, DeVaughn Rodgers, Education Program Coordinator for BikePGH, here with your official Slow Roll update!

The History

Positive Spin is a youth cycling program that helps to build all of the necessary skill sets to be a safe, independent commuting cyclist and active member of your community. For the past 10 years, the Positive Spin program has been growing and transforming to fit the needs of all who want to implement its curriculum.

In doing so it has actively engaged youth and adults ranging from middle school-aged to college level and everything in between. It has been molded to fit programming for both in school and after school programming, summer camps, and much more. All of this, while building partnerships with both public and private schools and other community organizations throughout Pittsburgh.

The Positive Spin Alumni & Friends Slow Roll series was created to engage all current students, alumni, their friends and family, and any other partners in the Positive Spin network with a fun, slow-paced, no-drop ride that positively highlights the communities our students are from.

**Students and staff of Positive Spin & Venture Outdoors Summer Dreamers academy class of 2019 gather outside of Bicycle Heaven for Slow Roll #2 of the year**.

The Numbers

This was an amazing year for the Slow Roll series. We blew the first season’s numbers out of the water. We had 104 riders for the season! That means we more than quadrupled the number of attendees. Of those numbers, over 30 attendees were either alumni or current students of the Positive Spin program.

Our main goal is to engage more youth and families of the Positive Spin network in the communities they live in. We are proud to say that we have made big steps in accomplishing our goal. We only hope to get more people out on this ride to continue the engagement of our Positive Spin network both in and out of school.

We aim to get more community members outside and riding with us next year, so be sure to tell your friends and families about the Slow Roll group ride!

**Ride #1 June 15, 2019 – The start to an amazing event season**.

**Ride #2 July 17, 2019 – The slow roll turned Collaboration ride with Venture Outdoors and Positive Spin Summer Dreamers Class of 2019**.

**Ride #3 August 10, 2019 – The final ride of the season at The Point before headed back to the Propel Northside Community Center**.

Special Shout Outs

First off, I’d like to say thank you to all of the people that came out and rode with us this year. Your presence and camaraderie are what make events like these worth while. A big thank you to all of the students, teachers, instructors, mechanics, alumni, friends, and family of Positive Spin for coming out and helping the Positive Spin program grow for 10 years and counting.

Other big thanks to the Homewood Brushton YMCA, Summer Dreamers Academy, and Propel Northside Community Center for being such great community partners and letting us host our rides using your facilities. Thank you to our partners at Healthy Ride for all of your support, and, finally, thank you to our friends at Remake Learning for naming us one of this year’s Ignite Grant award winners. We could not have made any of this happen without your continued support.