Last year, bicycle-sharing startup oBike ceased operations in Singapore, leaving the city with an inconvenient parting gift: thousands of abandoned bicycles, left behind in parks and other public spaces.
But to Myanmar entrepreneur Mike Than Tun Win, it was a problem with a simple solution. Why not distribute the bikes to poor kids in outlying villages so they could bike back and forth to school?
“It’s a common sight to see lines and lines of students walking long distances from home to school in rural villages,” Than told TechCrunch. “Some students can walk up to one hour from home to school....a school bus is almost unheard of to the students in rural villages.”
To put his plan into action, Win created a nonprofit organization called LessWalk, which purchases the bikes and gets them up to snuff for their young new owners. To hear more of Win's uplifting story, read the feature article.
Posted on 06/10/2019 at 10:59 AM