Recycle bicycle group gets children moving

The cycle recycle group (from left) Hayden McGregor, 14, Dillan Davey, 13, Carter Fearton, 16, Josh McLaughlin, 14, Kane Lovich, 13, Joseph Sopers, and Bailey Matthys, 14. Photo / Geoff Lewis

Joe Sopers likes bicycles and mountain biking.

His favourite steed sits in the back of his classroom at Fraser High School and he's clocked up more than 18,000km just getting back and forth from home to school.

Joe Sopers is Fraser's HoD for technology and 'hard materials'. With his wife Anita, he is a member of a Hamilton Catholic congregation.

The couple joined the St Vincent de Paul social service organisation as a way of giving something back to the community.

He decided to blend his interest in bicycles with the facilities he has available at Fraser.

"We needed some room and the principal gave her go-ahead and the groundsman found us some storage space.

"One of our mums put a call out on social media for donations of old bicycles that we could rebuild, " he said.

Joe and a small group of students work after school hours, mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to recycle all sorts of discarded bicycles from once thoroughbred racing types to little pee-wee bikes for three and four year olds.

That was late last year and now the storage sheds are bulging with completed examples and projects awaiting attention.

There is almost no cost.The group has one set of specialist bicycle tools, but most just need a clean-up, get the brakes working, oil here and there and the tyres pumped up.

Where parts are needed damaged examples are cannibalised and they're away again. Joe has got to know the local bike shops, and now and then he'll put his hand in his pocket to buy a few things like inner-tubes when the originals are past-it.

Joe and his group of after-school bicycle mechanics have rebuilt about 56 bicycles which have been given away to kids who need them often through schools and to the migrant community.

"Many families have a few old bicycles sitting around rusting away.

"I just like to see kids cycling to school. There's not enough people cycling. It's better for the environment and everyone."