Value

The main strengths and value of the collaboration are the partnership with the local authority that provided the funding needed for the project to succeed and the work of the Sustrans Bike Officer, Kim William who has made the project happen. The collaboration has had a positive impact on the community, with the reduction of traffic around the school and an increase of children learning to ride their bikes safely to school. Training is also offered to adults who do not feel confident riding on roads themselves. There is a potential for this collaboration to expand with the Parish Council and take the programme into the wider community.

Over the four years of the Bike It project, Kim has built a strong relationship with all her stakeholders, giving her the time to understand the needs of the stakeholders and how best to communicate with them and appreciates their issues and challenges.

This has been successful within Oakmeadow School, where Kim developed relationships with parents, incorporated requests from the school community to develop new activities or repeat old ones. There have been suggestions that keen parents might be able to be trained by Kim to carry out some Bike It activities within school, addressing the time barrier with teachers and schools. These kinds of contact with the service users have assisted in the programme evolving to meet the school and community needs.

The impact of the project can be hard to measure. There is the evidence of an increase of children using their bikes to get to school and seeing lots of children around the village riding their bikes. But measuring the health benefits is more elusive and is not something the project is monitoring.

Throughout this project there have been times when collaboration was not always easy. It does take time and it’s important to maintain motivation among the participants. Kim has played a crucial role in co-ordinating the project and linking the service uses with the stakeholders.  Her four years of working on this project have had a positive impact on the project being sustained within the schools of Shrewsbury. With funding secured through 2015 Kim can continue her work with the Bike It program at Oakmeadow School to further strengthen the collaboration.