Sparkplug 26

As the outdoor season came to a close, I had the fantastic opportunity to meet, on separate occasions, some people who really, REALLY love the sport of motocross. I was personally stunned that each of these people shared my dream of somehow finding a way to expose underprivileged kids to our great sport. Honestly, we all had different visions that came to us in different ways, but we all shared the same goal of exposing these children to dirtbiking in the hopes of changing the course of their lives for the better.

For the past 7 years or so, I have harbored and nurtured a vision for a nationwide, non-profit organization that would reach out specifically to foster children. Our great country has a problem with taking care of the nearly 135,000 children in the nation’s foster care system. It seems that families that want to adopt aren’t interested in the older children as much, and they certainly don’t want to adopt the “problem” children. So these kids stay in foster homes or institutions until they’re 18, when they are “emancipated”… basically kicked out into the streets to fend for themselves. As you might imagine, many of these emancipated teens become negative statistics: in poverty, on drugs, in jail, etc.

My thinking was that maybe we can help “turn around” some of these troubled kids, using dirtbiking as an incentive. So I came up with the concept of “Ride 2 Achieve Academy”. In a nutshell, the basic idea of R2AA is this: take a group of foster kids and teach them how to ride and how to perform basic bike maintenance as well as tutor them in marketable skills such as photography, video editing and website design. The kids would have to “earn” their participation in the program by performing well in school, staying out of trouble and things like that.

As I fleshed out this idea, it became clear to me that the real challenge of launching such a program was not financial at all. There are a ton of organizations and individuals willing to make charitable contributions to legitimate causes that clearly have society’s benefit in mind. The real issue is rounding up enough concerned and caring adults that are willing to put in the time and effort to make the program work. It’s not enough to buy a bunch of minibikes and tear around the desert with these kids… they need real life coaching from people who genuinely care for their welfare. And they need solid instruction and training so that when they are finally “emancipated” into the real world, they’ll be prepared to continue the road to adulthood, and become positive, productive members of society.

So when I found myself, on three separate occasions, meeting three different people who also shared similar concerns, I realized that perhaps this “challenge” of finding adults to participate in this program may not be such a big obstacle after all. This great sport of ours apparently attracts some of the best people in the world; generous, loving people who may be willing to donate their time and love to the process of helping prevent foster children from falling through the cracks. You may be one of those people. If you are, I’d love to hear from you; together we can make a hell of a difference.