[Ryan] We were getting some calls early on even 2009 and 10 from parents
who just were desperate to try and get their kids to ride and we're finding out
that these were older kids a lot of times 8,10 years old and then enquiring
more and more than we're finding out a lot of times they've got some special
need that's maybe kept them from learning or made them afraid to try.
So we worked on designing a special bike for them. [Susie] So we started with the 16 inch
we saw that suddenly instead of just going up to five years old teaching kids
to ride now we can suddenly go up to kids that were 10 years old and they
could learn how to ride. But then there were teenagers and there were adults and
there are several people that still didn't have opportunity. They were past
the point of having the Strider when they were little to start out on and we
wanted to give them the opportunity as well. We really truly believe that
everyone should have the opportunity to ride. So that's when we developed the 20 inch
bike for adults. We brought the 16 and 20 inch bike to a physical
therapy conference in Utah. When we were there we met Ellen Anderson who is
the head of the physical therapy department at Rutgers University. We
built this relationship with her and she has a huge relationship with Special
Olympics New Jersey. She introduced us to Andrea Moore. Andrea was using our
education curriculum that we had developed in 2014 to teach her young
athletes how to ride bikes. She had seen just amazing success and she was
one of the first people that ever tried to use the curriculum.
Andrea also thought our bikes were really cool and we had some
conversations and she decided why not let us come to the young athletes
festival in New Jersey for the USA Special Olympics Games which was huge.
So there was this huge festival and we set up this adventure zone.
I can't even tell you how many kids he had come through. Kids were getting off of
walkers and getting onto our Striders and riding the course. There were ramps
and there were cones and they were maneuvering it and it was so cool!
We knew we were onto something and that we could have this huge potential with
Special Olympics in the future and they saw it too. It was almost like a case
study. It was this is how you do it, this is how you teach kids how to ride a bike.
It was a no brainer that she thought we need to have this curriculum in every
young athletes program not only in our nation in the US but globally. So she had
made some introductions with Special Olympics international and we are
actually piloting eight programs right now all over the globe for young
athletes to give every child not just in America but in the world the opportunity
to learn how to ride a bike. [Ryan] We want people to be active and healthy and
enjoying their life. We strive to do that through teaching
people how to ride. Special Olympic strives to do that by getting kids
involved in sports. We believe that you know riding a bike is the best
sport that they could be involved in. So we all win when we work
together to get kids on bikes. [Susie] Rolling out this program globally is huge for
everyone because suddenly people that didn't have the opportunity to ride are
gaining freedom and independence and mobility and the joy that comes with
riding on two wheels.
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