Slow Roll recently won a Knight Cities grant and I was honored to be a part of the team submitting the proposal. The grant will help fund Slow Roll to use our audience and voice to connect our riders to meaningful projects, initiatives, and nonprofit organization in the community. We know we have  14,000+ people engaged in the work we are doing. They come on our bike rides, read our emails, and attend our events. Now we are working toward using that voice to better connect them in a deeper way.

Our first nonprofit partnership was with Detroit Friendship House, a food bank located in Hamtramck serving a majority immigrant population. It’s a very small organization and it was a really awesome opportunity to tour their facility and get to know the staff and clients. They have a small staff and budget, but very big hearts. I was so excited to be able to do something for the organization. We organized a food drive for our June 24th ride at Traffic Jam. Cathy Maher, the CEO and her lovely team of volunteers arrived and set up a tent where they passed out information and told people about the work they do.

We collected over 600 cans of food for the organization and $65 in cash donations. It was an incredible experience and the team was overwhelmed with gratitude. I hope we were able to inspire a few people to follow up or continue giving back. I am looking forward to creating these experiences for other organizations and using the Slow Roll brand and voice to inspire greater change in the city of Detroit.