World Bicycle Relief

Wheels for Health

Wheels for Health

World Bicycle Relief partners with health ministries, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other development practitioners to ensure Buffalo Bicycles are in the hands of well qualified and equipped community health care workers. We ensure these essential service providers remain on the road by providing access to spare parts, locally based mechanics, and community-based programming. ...

GOAL

$100,000

International
07/01/2024 > 30/06/2025

Field of Interest

  • Health/wellbeing and medical research
  • International aid and development

Target Population

  • People experiencing socio-economic disadvantage or vulnerability
  • People with a disability, illness or disease
World Bicycle Relief World Bicycle Relief

World Bicycle Relief was developed through innovation, using simple but incredibly effective technology (specially designed Buffalo Bicycles) and has exceptional monitoring and evaluation of activities that prove impact. Bicycles are provided to enable access to education, healthcare and livelihoods.

Most importantly our programs are sustainable, we partner with communities, the bicycles are assembled in country, local Bicycle Supervisory Committees monitor bicycle use, trained mechanics are stationed at schools and we provide ready access to spare parts. Each bicycle should last a lifetime.

In rural developing countries, the biggest barrier to healthcare is distance.

World Bicycle Relief partners with local and international organisations to ensure that health workers have reliable transport, this enables them to visit more patients. Evidence from our health programs shows that with a Buffalo Bicycle, Community Health Workers served 35% more patients, increased referral rates by 50%, and remained in their positions with a 97% retention rate.

World Bicycle Relief has program operations in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda and Colombia. We will be launching activities in Tanzania in 2024.

Project Summary

World Bicycle Relief partners with health ministries, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other development practitioners to ensure Buffalo Bicycles are in the hands of well qualified and equipped community health care workers. We ensure these essential service providers remain on the road by providing access to spare parts, locally based mechanics, and community-based programming.

Mobilized community health care workers spend less time in transit and more time engaging with patients;
delivering vaccines, medicines and family planning;
diagnosing and treating illness;
ensuring compliance with TB and HIV medication;
referring patients with serious conditions to regional health facilities;
and helping transport women in labor and severely ill patients via bicycle ambulance.
Overall, bicycles significantly contribute to delivering critical health services to the least served communities, optimizing efficiency and improving overall health outcomes.

Our Wheels for Health program aims to improve health service delivery and health outcomes by mobilizing 38,720 health workers that will impact approximately 3.8 million households with improved health care services.

Project Outcomes

The Health Sector Impact Program will boost the efficiency and retention rates of 38,720 community health workers in the program’s target countries of Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Tanzania. With community health workers serving approximately 100 households, the newly mobilized workers will reach 3,872,000 households, each with approximately five members, impacting approx. 19 million rural residents.

Through a fit-for-purpose bicycle, community health workers will reduce their travel time to the communities and households they serve and improve efficiency of health service delivery. For example, In a similar WBR program in Zambia, from the two-year period from baseline to endline survey, 97% of health workers remained in their positions. Health workers were eager to share how they leveraged their Buffalo: 73% used their bicycle to travel to market to buy goods, 64% to travel to places of employment or work, 52% to gather water, 30% to travel to their farm, 27% to gather fuel for cookfires (e.g. firewood), 24% for other income-generating activities, and 21% to take their children to school

The Health Sector Impact Program will also improve community health worker retention rates in target areas by offering a service-to-own agreement for participating Community Health Workers to remain in their position. Bicycles are a valuable asset for many rural households and offer significant utility during non-service hours. During non-service hours, community health workers may use the bicycle to—for example—pursue income-generating activities, travel to market to buy food and other goods and services, gather water, and/or take children to school.

We anticipate similar utility for community health workers across Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Budget Breakdown

TOTAL BUDGET: $2,218,000
FUNDING
Funding source Amount
M F Foundation $818,000
Public Donations $200,000
International WBR Grants $500,000
R F Fund $200,000
CM Corporate $350,000
I T Corporate $50,000
Funding gap (unconfirmed) $100,000
EXPENSES
Expense item Amount
Bicycles Logistics and transport $1,336,000
Monitoring evalution and learning $263,000
Program implementation $286,000
Support and management $333,000

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Level 6, 126 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne VIC 3002

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

Australian Communities Foundation is a proudly inclusive organisation and an ally of LGBTQIA+ communities and the movement toward equality.