World Bicycle Relief Ben Sadler | video podcast

This is a bicycle with two chains. It turns out this is the most reliable, easily serviced way of creating a rugged bike with two gears that's needed in parts of Africa, South America and Asia. This is the new version of the Buffalo bike from World Bicycle Relief. Meet the new Buffalo Utility S2 with a groundbreaking two-speed, two-chain drivetrain. At the heart of this heavy-duty utility machine is a new, patented, two-speed switchable freewheel with two cogs, each paired with a chain ring via a single speed chain. It caused a small sensation in Putney. The team from the Clubhouse Cafe and Bike Shop were keen to try it. The film of how this Buffalo was built will be screened here tonight. We're beside the River Thames, that will become important soon, and I'm learning more about World Bicycle Relief from the UK Managing Director, Ben Sadler. I think for me, the way I always look at it is, it's this thing around like reducing the distance between people and opportunity. You imagine like if there's a girl who has to walk 10 kilometres to school, back and forth every day, obviously there's challenges with that, and you introduce a bicycle and suddenly that distance just reduces and you have all these exciting bits of impact happen as a result. So in that case, it might be that, you know, suddenly the attendance of that student goes up, their academic achievement goes up, they have more time to socialise, more time to be with their family, and that's all driven by having access to a bicycle essentially. So let's see how this thing rides. The idea is it's in one gear, you backpedal and then it goes into another. Oh wow, it just changes like that. Now Ben's not a big cyclist but he rode it down here from King's Cross, he said, oh yeah, and he said it's really good. You rock up to the traffic lights, just pedal backwards a little bit and you're in a different gear, and that's a great way of doing it. So it might be something you never know that takes off on city bikes here. They've certainly patented the idea and that makes a bit sense. It'd be fascinating, wouldn't it, if a design for the wildest parts of the world ended up being really useful in cities. Actually feels a bit like a Dutch bike too. Very good city riding position. We did originally not have our own bicycle. I hate this. And I think listening to the need of those that use it, we were able to realise, you know, we actually had to develop something together with communities. So in the past you were just shipping that out, donated bikes? Well not so much donated bikes but certainly bicycles, you know, bicycles that weren't buffaloes. And then we had to create something that was far more durable, that was suitable for the environments and the purposes that it was being used for. And the buffalo, the design of it has developed over years. So we have many, many test riders that, you know, every day of the year are feeding back how the bicycle's working, all the different components, and that enables the team to be able to, you know, continue to develop every part of it. And that's really where the S2 comes from. You know, we've had a single speed bike for a very long time and there are, you know, reasons for that. A lot around the maintenance of it. It's very easy to look after. It doesn't break. And the S2 is, you know, our first bike with, it's a two-speed, which is exciting. But of course, as soon as you introduce gears, you can have some challenges with maintenance and challenges with it breaking. So this has taken a long time to develop. Why is it done that way with two chains? I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, it's interesting. That is all to do with, and I guess I might go on to this, but in terms of that, the importance of it being able to be maintained very simply, and also like what tools you have access to, and this gear system, it's incredibly durable. It's easy to look after. It's all kind of done with one tool. So it means it's going to last for a long time. It's really important. It struck me that you guys don't just, it's not the West just giving to your programme countries. There's a, it's very much a two-way street in terms of design and what's needed. Can you just talk a little bit about that? That's it. I think with World Bicycle Week, and I think with many organisations in the charity sector, it's really important that you respond to needs. And of course that need is, you find out that need from those that are going to use it. It's not about me saying I think they need it. The design of the bicycle already is something that's been developed in partnership with a number of different organisations, but driven by those that use it. The bicycle itself is obviously very durable and will last a long time. But one of the things actually that drew me to the organisation was the ecosystem that surrounds the bicycle. So this is where you're training local mechanics. It's where you're opening shops. So there's easy access to spare parts. It's where you're setting up what we call bicycle supervisory committees, which are local people that lead on how the bicycle is distributed, how it's used, all these kinds of things. So it's all locally led. And that's what makes the Buffalo sustainable and last a long time. And then, you know, it's not for me to develop programmes for a rural area in Kenya. You know, my expertise is partnership building in the UK. So that's my role. We have teams in Kenya, we have teams in Zimbabwe that are focused on programme delivery, on monetary allocation. So it's about working out who's best placed and that's what makes an organisation sustainable. Those partnerships are clearly demonstrated in the film I'm back to watch in the evening. It's called Building the Buffalo. It's a fascinating story and why I chose to support this charity, which has been running for 20 years. So it started back in 2005 with FK Day and Liam Ispach Day, who were in around the Indian Ocean during the tsunami. And speaking to communities, together they realised actually, one of the big challenges was being able to, you know, connect communities to go and see people to be able to access services like education, healthcare. And because of course, the tsunami caused so many issues with infrastructure, people just weren't able to do it. And it was actually bicycles that then suddenly enabled to connect those communities. So in 2005, they were able to distribute 24,000 bicycles. And alongside that, something really important is they were able to measure the impact. So they were able to look at suddenly this huge increase in, you know, people being able to get to education and to school, a huge increase in being able to access healthcare to access other vital services. And it was like, oh, hang on, this is something that could work in other communities as well. So yeah, that's how it all started. And that's how, yeah, we're here today. But it must have been a big step from going in to provide emergency relief to going, hang on a second, we can do this in South America, we can do this right throughout Africa, we can do this in other parts of Asia. That must have been a huge challenge, really. And do you know how they did it? I mean, I know you're only in the organisation for six months, so you weren't there at the time. But yeah, do you know what the story is, taking it through there? I think that the big part of it is partnerships. So kind of going back to that point around need, it wasn't about, you know, the group saying, oh, we're going to go to this country and just do it here. It was actually talking to NGOs, to government, to community organisations and finding out where this kind of intervention would work. And it's with those, you know, those reliable partnerships and the setup of these, the BSCs, these vital supervisor committees that have enabled it to grow alongside, you know, obviously the expertise of FK and Leah. 70% of the African continent live in the rural setup and have no access to mobility. It is that group of people that we feel have been left behind. We want more bicycles in the hands of the people who so need them, in terms of the three thematic areas, which is health, livelihoods, and education. We're approaching now a million bicycles. They're on about 830,000 bicycles that have been distributed since opening. So that's a lot of people that have been mobilised. So we look at kind of, on average, our bicycle reaches a minimum of five people, which is normally a household. So when you've got, maybe you've got a student and a sibling that are using it to get to and from school, you might have a parent that's using it to access healthcare. You might have a parent who's using it to support the business. So it's opportunity closer. And how do they get the vehicle? How do they get the bike? I mean, do they have to buy it? What's the deal? So that's really, yeah, it's an interesting area. So there are a number of ways, essentially, and it's led by those bicycle supervisory committees. So that's where all of the kind of the key ideas come, particularly around distribution. So, you know, in the first instance, yes, you can, bikes are donated. So you'll have, as an example, within the education sector, we will donate bicycles to schools and that bicycle is owned by the school. And then imagine, you know, these, these buffaloes that will last for, you know, 12, 15, even 20 years, they're going to carry, you know, four or five students through their entire education, which is exciting. Generations. Exactly. So you've got that, which is what we call the kind of a philanthropic bike. You've got partnership bikes. So that's where we'll work with organisations like the Red Cross in Uganda that have thousands of healthcare workers that are needing to get out into rural areas and meet with, with patients. And that's where we'll kind of, we'll share. So we'll donate some into that, but they'll also purchase them. And then kind of going into, you know, I think the way that international development is working, like philanthropic donations are still very important, but also what other ways can you scale your impact? So one of those is around what we call incentivised sales. So you imagine you've got a, let's say a savings group of 10 entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their business. The bicycle is proven to help increase income. So they can come to us and say, look, you know, we've got enough to say buy two or three bicycles. We'll say brilliant. Tell you what, if you can buy three, we'll give you seven. So you've got that incentivised sales. Then you can also buy it. So again, yeah, if people are able to, they can. And also if you aren't able to afford the full amount upfront, so it's £120 for a bicycle, you are able to, we're starting to explore different kind of financial models where you can perhaps basically paying installments across six months a year. So trying to think of many different ways that someone could get hold of a buffalo. It's not our job to make our products successful. It's our job to make the people that ride the bike successful. So my background is commuting as a cyclist, but I guess my expertise is around like international development of the charity sector. So that's key with World Bicycle Week is, you know, you bring in people who have that specific expertise for certain areas. So we do have engineers that of course, they're the experts in the cycling side. We do have our programme experts and our monetary allocation experts who are in country, in Kenya, in Zambia, in Ghana, sorry, not Ghana, in Zimbabwe, et cetera, who are experts in programme delivery and monetary allocation. And people like myself, my background is partnership building, which is why kind of my role here is in the UK. Does politics get in the way here when you're working in countries, different countries? It's bound to, to a certain extent, both in this country, I suppose, as well as where you, where the programme countries are. Yeah, it can do. I think, I mean, it goes back to like, when we think about sustainability, I mentioned earlier about partnerships and how important that is. And for us, like government is a vital partner. If you're looking at scaling impact and long-term sustainability, you want to be working with the Ministry of Education, you want to be working with the Ministry of Health. Of course, like changing governments can challenge that. But ultimately our goal when working in a country is to partner with, be it NGOs, community organisations, but government is also a priority as well. Because that's the thing that's going to change it long-term. Yeah, it's key. You talked about getting the feedback, that was at the start. How do you know you are doing good? Yeah, good question. Another thing that actually led me to the organisation, it's been very strong over the years on monetary allocation. So we have our own impact teams that are out in the field, talking to the bicycle users, finding out exactly what difference it's making in their lives. So we've got some amazing impact information around, you know, I mentioned earlier about access to education. We know from a kind of an entrepreneurial point of view, it can help generate more income. From a healthcare point of view, you've got healthcare workers that are suddenly able to reach more patients than they were before. And that all comes from our amazing monetary allocation teams based in each country. We also work very closely with, well, we work with independent evaluators that are able to come in and provide independent research reports. I've actually got one, I can't say too much about it because it's not officially public yet, but we've got one that's just about to come out, which is a two-year research piece where we had a control group in a particular community. So half were given a bicycle and half weren't. And there's some really interesting findings, because of course they're all in essentially in similar situations. So we're able to see exactly what the bicycle, what the difference it had on those lives. Oh, the classic study, you've got control group. Yeah, exactly. Have you got any preliminary results from that? I basically can't, unfortunately can't say anything at the moment. So they will be live in the next two, three weeks. But I can say there's a lot of evidence there that shows it is increasing incomes, increasing resilience, increasing access. So some really interesting findings. Well, when you put out a press release on that, I'll make sure it goes in the show notes that accompany this podcast. Tell me about the film that's premiering tonight here at the Far Pass. Yeah, so we've got a new documentary film, Building the Buffalo. And that basically tells the story of the Buffalo Bicycle, and particularly the new S2 and how that's come to be. So like all of the research, I mentioned the test riders, and it will show the viewers tonight exactly, you know, why the bicycle is there, the impact it can make. And also like the long-term, like kind of long-term plans for the organisation, how we want to be able to essentially give access to more people, or increase access to more people. If you're watching the video carefully, you might have seen someone clearing up behind us. If people are watching, can they see the tide here? It is actually creeping up on us here. And we're going to have to stop now, because any moment now this is all going to flood. The River Thames occasionally floods this road to considerable depth. The cafe has to close flood doors, and we had to leave. So thanks a lot, Ben. Thanks for doing this, and really appreciate it. Appreciate it. Cheers. A bit shorter than I planned, but that actually is getting quite close. Links to World Bicycle Relief and its new film are in the video description and show notes. I'm Simon Willis. Thank you for watching and listening. Goodbye.