The initiative is the brainchild of Dani Valent, a Melbourne-based writer and blogger, specialising in food and travel with an extensive network in the hospitality industry.
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic when Melbourne underwent the first lockdown, and the hospitality industry began feeling its impact, It became apparent to Ms Valent that many temporary visa holders who are crucial to the hospitality sector would be severely affected.
“Every restaurant in Australia has somebody on a temporary visa working for them; either an international student, perhaps a sponsored worker or they are working on a holiday working visa,” Ms Valant told SBS Cycling Central.
“These are people who are crucial to the food industry, and they were left out by the government through the pandemic. They weren’t given the support that Australians citizens have been given.”
Ms Valent says it is unacceptable that a rich country like Australia would leave temporary visa holders in a “derelict situation”, and she decided to do something to help them.
She started by creating an area on her website compiling useful information for temporary migrant workers, including details about visas, rules and regulations, information on how to get assistance and tips on how to deal with the pandemic.
“I also started a mailing list of temporary visa holders. With that, I disseminated information and support… I wrote news stories about these people and featured them on my podcast. I suppose it was partly about trying to help them but also just bringing light to their situation,” she says.
She also started a soup project in association with chef Ben Shewry of Attica.
“Every Wednesday we’d make soup and every Thursday we’d give it out, and over the months of Melbourne’s two lockdowns what we were able to support people with grew a lot,” she says.
'Bikes for happiness'
First, they started giving temporary visa holders just soup and bread, and then expanded the offerings to include grocery and MyKi cards.
Through her close contact with vulnerable migrants, Ms Valent says it became apparent to her that they could immensely benefit from having a bicycle.
“So I thought there are so many bikes out there sitting in people’s garages. Somebody’s got a new bike, the old bike is still sitting there; wouldn’t that be great if we could match up some of these bikes and give them to some of these people?” she says.
“They perhaps have the opportunity of finding a job eventually and a bike would be a great way to get there, or whether they want to ride around just for fun.”
The project focuses on how a bike can be a very important element, not just for entertainment; it is a tool.
So, she started her own project – Bikes for Happiness – and started getting bikes to some of the 1,100 visa holders on her mailing list.
Ms Valent created a database of people willing to donate their old bikes and people who needed them. The donors drop their bikes at a workshop where volunteers repair old bikes, and they also coach visa holders about road rules and safe bike-riding around Melbourne.
Other benefactors donate money to buy safety gear, including locks and helmets.
It’s very ad hoc, it’s very slow and it’s not that well organised. But, in the end, things do happen. People offer bikes, people collect them, take them to the person who is going to fix them, that person fixes them, then the visa holder comes and gets it or someone takes it to them.
Dani Valent says that the project remains a grassroots initiative. She only sees it as a nice way to connect people, and she is keen to keep it going that way.
“What I’m really doing is connecting people, connecting people who want to help with people that quiet really are helped by this beautiful act of getting a free bike.”
“It’s so funny that I am running the project, but I have not touched a bike myself,” she says.
“One thing we all noticed through this pandemic is that people are basically very kind and very good. And it is good to give them that opportunity to exercise that part of themselves.”
“Every bike that gets passed on to somebody is a little blast of happiness. For me and hopefully for them as well.”
