Since 2005, World Bicycle Relief has been dedicated to ensuring that lack of transportation is not a barrier to better, healthier lives by providing its award-winning bicycles to rural populations around the world. Through partnerships with governments, nonprofits, and community-based organizations, World Bicycle Relief’s distributions have increased the reach of community health workers, decreased school absenteeism among girls, and allowed recipients to spend less time in transit and more time focusing on what matters.
A 2025 SNF grant made as part of the Foundation’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) provides hundreds of community health workers in Zambia with bicycles to more easily, safely, and quickly reach their geographically disparate clients in the country’s rural provinces. The grant also supports the incorporation of these bicycles into community health workers’ existing workflows; World Bicycle Relief collaborates with the Zambian Ministry of Health and its partners to monitor bicycle distribution, training, troubleshooting, and usage.
In order to ensure effective adoption of its bicycles, World Bicycle Relief has developed a model based on local bicycle assembly and distribution, providing spare parts and training mechanics in the community. The establishment of such networks enables World Bicycle Relief to build a sustainable ecosystem that long outlasts initial bicycle distributions.
SNF’s grant helps World Bicycle Relief engage its existing network of established bicycle distribution and community health partners in Zambia in expanding their work to the country’s Central and Northern Provinces, rural areas with high disease burdens and sparse health care facilities, to better serve hundreds of thousands of people.