Got this in the email, looks like a really fun time you should check it out!

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Ability Bikes Cooperative in Ghana
A Multi-Media Presentation by David Branigan, Bikes Not Bombs International Programs Director
Friday, Nov 13 2009 – Potluck at 6:30, presentation at 7:00
at the Bikes Not Bombs Hub, 284 Amory Street in Jamaica Plain
http://www.bikesnotbombs.org/locations

Join us for an exciting report back from Koforidua, Ghana by David Branigan, BNB’s new International Programs Director. David will present a slideshow, video footage, and discussion of his 15 months working in partnership with the Emmanuel Yeboah Education Foundation and Sports Academy (EEFSA) to train 6 physically-challenged people to be bike mechanics and administrators.

They’ve now registered Ability Bikes as Ghana’s first cooperatively-owned and run bike shop. They are running a successful business, paying their own salaries, increasing respect for physically-challenged people and breaking stereotypes, while also greatly improving the bicycle infrastructure and thus affordable mobility in this city of 87,000 people.

This is also a great time to get to know David Branigan, who has taken over the job of International Programs Director from Carl Kurz. Carl founded Bikes Not Bombs and is now on a 2-year sabbatical after 25 years with Bikes Not Bombs.

For full details on the event, visit http://www.bikesnotbombs.org/node/615

You can see more photos from Ability Bikes at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bnbghana/

Let us know if you can bring some food to share (not required, of course) or have any questions by emailing arik@bikesnotbombs.org or calling 617-522-022

EMMANUEL’S GIFT – film showing
Thursday April 10th
7pm

Bikes Not Bombs’ newest international project gets underway in April, to setting up an entire bicycle workshop within wheelchair reach, to employ a full staff of disabled mechanics in Ghana. The project is a partnership between Bikes Not Bombs and a foundation in Ghana created by an extraordinary man, Emmanuel Yeboah. The documentary Emmanuel’s Gift is narrated by Oprah Winfrey and by following Emmanuel’s struggles and achievements, it gives a background for this new project. In late April Bikes Not Bombs will send a shipment of nearly 500 donated bicycles to get the project started. The 40 foot shipping container will be put on the ground, with doors and windows cut in the metal sides so that it becomes part of the structure of the new workshop.

Both introducing and following the film, we’ll have a discussion with David Branigan and Carl Kurz. David is a BNB shop mechanic who has 3 years previous experience in Ghana in the Peace Corps, and he’ll spend the first five months as technical trainer for this project. Carl is BNB’s founder and International Programs Director.

Emmanuel Yeboah was born with a severely deformed leg. The stigma of disability is strong in Ghana, and his father abandoned the family. Emmanuel’s mother enrolled him in school and taught him that he deserved the same opportunities as everyone else, but when she fell ill he left school and took up shining shoes on the street to support the family. After his mother’s death left Emmanuel an orphan he began a personal campaign to spread the empowering philosophy he learned from her. From foreign aid workers he heard of a foundation to help disabled athletes and he wrote a letter requesting a bicycle, with a dream of cycling across Ghana to raise awareness and respect for the disabled. Emmanuel received the bike and made the cross-country trip, which led to more opportunities: a trip to the US to compete in paralympics, a prosthetic leg, a second cross-Ghana bicycle trip, recognition from government officials, a new law in Ghana mandating improved access for disabled people, and lastly the EEFSA foundation to create employment and sports opportunities for disabled Ghanaians. It is this foundation which has partnered with Bikes Not Bombs. We’re excited to show this film on the big screen here at BNB, and discuss the upcoming project launch!