How did they get the grant money and what went into it?

On March 5, VHS’s Bike Club received a grant donation of $2,700 in front of the VHS auditorium. The purpose of this donation is intended to help construct a bike shop on campus for students to repair their bikes. The idea of the bike repair shop was introduced by former Bike Club president Max Mechtenberg and stayed in development until Seamus Kerrigan ‘27, the current president of the club, revisited the idea, ultimately getting the grant through emails to and from the Channel Islands Bicycle Club.

Club supervisor Mark Tolkmitt said, “I would like to say I’m really proud of these guys because I’ve watched it go on. We did the legwork to get the guy down from the district to approve it and everything. We did that, but then I backed off, and they did the brainstorming and communicating and finally, to see the money come through was awesome.”

The Bike Club plans to place this repair shop next to the bike racks and hopes to have it done by the end of the school year. “It’s all going to go towards a bike repair shop by the bike racks. Our past president Max, got all the approval for it, he got a little bit of the funding and we got the rest. It’s been really fun,” said Kerrigan.

They received this grant from the Channel Islands Bicycle Club, a recreational cycling organization in Ventura County that was established in 1990. The club’s primary purpose is to promote bicycling for recreation, health, sport, and transportation, according to the Channel Islands Bicycle Club. CIBike is a non-profit that is led by a board of directors and operates under bylaws. The club uses funds raised from memberships and the Cool Breeze Century ride, a recreational bike ride of varying distances that attracts over 1,000 riders. They use this funding to support organizations, projects and activities that support cycling.

Kurt Wilkinson, the grants director of the Channel Islands Bicycle Club, was the one in contact with the Bicycle Club and interfaced with the board. “After working with the board for a while, you kind of get a feel for some of the questions you’re going to answer, and whether something’s going to fly or not…So that’s part of the back and forth where it’s like, okay, this is what I think they’re going to do, and so we get it to that point, and we keep refining it to, oh, this is going to go through. And so then, I presented it to the board, and sure enough, it went through,” said Wilkinson.