Help Ben Keep Mountain Biking Alive at OCHS

HI all!

My name is Ben Hopkins and I teach visual art at a small high school in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland (Oakland Charter High School or OCHS). I am also an avid mountain biker and have been slowly building interest in our student body in the sport over the past few years. As you may or may not know the sport is quite expensive and, as a Title 1 school, our students tend to come from families with very little income. I personally have tried to build enough of a group of loaner bikes plus tools, equipment and transportation needs so that they can compete in the Norcal division of the national league (NICA):

https://nationalmtb.org/

In 2022/23 I managed to get us registered as a stand alone team but so far I haven't found any other adults from our school willing to volunteer to coach. As a result we are folding back into the local umbrella team Oakland Composite:

https://oaklandcompositemtb.com/

While I am happy with being an Oakland Composite coach who would rather have his own independent team someday, as long as I keep exposing new riders to the sport from my school/community I'm happy. Composite has been established for almost 20 years and while they provide many of the loaners OCHS kids use, I have found it isn't enough and I have to turn kids away each year for lack of equipment.

At the end of the 2022-2023 school year I hosted a fund raiser at our school and about $6000 dollars was pledged by different donors but none of those funds ever materialized. In order for me to have a usable stable of loaner bikes and a few spares on hand to keep mountain biking an option for kids at OCHS, I am asking for about this amount for the upcoming 24-25 school year. About half of this includes buying a couple lightly used bikes so those should last several more years and if I use GoFundMe again it should be for a little less in upcoming years. Kids at OCHS are extremely willing for beginners and I find I have been able to get people mountain biking from communities that are normally excluded from the sport, your help is greatly appreciated, truly!