Community recycles the cycles at Free Bikes for Kidz event

[Owatonna People's Press, October 08, 2018] With about a half hour still on the clock on Saturday, volunteers at the Free Bikes 4 Kidz event at the Owatonna Hospital had already loaded about 150 bikes — an average of about 40 bikes an hour and enough to fill three trucks full — and still had some left to load up.

“I assume we’ll get some more,” said Natalie Ginter, the Allina Health director of community engagement for the Owatonna Hospital and the one coordinating Saturday’s bicycle collection at the hospital.

Allina Health is now in it's eighth year working with the Free Bikes 4 Kidz organization does just what its name suggests—collects donated bikes, makes sure they are in good repair and then distributes them free of charge to children and youth in and around the Twin Cities as well as communities such as Owatonna. Since starting in a Twin Cities garage a decade ago, the organization has expanded to 50 different sites that collect bikes and has given away more than 50,000 bikes to the kids. Read the full article at www.southernminn.com (subscription required).