Macon Church Offers Recycled Bikes to Homeless

Macon, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT)-One Macon church is turning trash into transportation. Centenary Church is looking for rusty, broken, and old bicycles.

Minister of Community Building at the church, Stacey Harwell, says “We’ve gotten rust buckets before that we were able to save brakes off of or wheels or pedals.”

Over the last few years the church has been able to refurbish around 30 bicycles. David Howard helps out with the program and has also received a free bike.

“It helped me with my transportation. Rather than walk so far and be so tired I could cover much more ground with a bicycle,” says Howard.

The program’s mission is to help those in need have transportation.” If we don’t take the bikes and fix them they’ll just sit in your house or you’ll dump them in a dump and they’ll sit there because metal doesn’t bio-degrade,” says Hardwell.

The donations are tax deductible and volunteer help fix the bikes. The Knight Foundation granted the Church around $7,000 to help with the bike program. The program has already received recognition; The Georgia Inter-faith Power and Light group presented the church with the Trail Blazer award for this green initiative.