Through collectively run and organized bike tours, Co-cycle facilitates an experiential learning environment in which emerging leaders develop confidence and skills in collaboration, organization, and cycling. By directly interacting with cooperatives, Co-cycle strengthens co-op networks and builds awareness of and support for the cooperative movement and its capacity to catalyze social change.
The journey will be organized as a set route comprised of regional legs. Events will be hosted by different communities and may include educational workshops or public showcases of co-operatives in a single region.
The Co-cycle tour covers a broad area in a manner that is deliberate and personal. The multifaceted, collaborative approach of the project allows it to meet many needs simultaneously, resulting in a broad sphere of influence. Not only will we generate research that will be useful to folks like ourselves who intend to be participants in co-operatives, we will also help organize community events. Each event will strengthen regional co-operative networks, educate the general public, and galvanize awareness of, and support for, the co-operative movement and its capacity to catalyze social change.
From the onset, Co-cycle has been a student-driven idea; we are motivated by a wide range of intersecting passions. We are drawn together across different academic fields, from public health to gender studies, from agriculture to sustainable business. Shaped and informed through multiple disciplines, what drives us as a collective is hope and inspiration towards a better world. Our different yet interwoven academic paths and life experiences, combined with our interest in biking as an alternative mode of transportation, fuel our eagerness to do this work.
As youth, we face a world full of complex problems whose solutions will require imaginative, creative, and social justice-oriented thinking. We are thus motivated to learn and teach others about why co-operatives have increasingly become recognized for their ability to address complicated and interconnected local and global issues.
*Co-cycle's Logo was designed by the talented Jonah Taylor