High Bridge man makes a difference with bicycles
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is the first in a regular biweekly series by Jay Jefferson Cooke about the people, places and organizations of Central Jersey that have positively influenced our community. Special Central Jerseyans celebrates the impact of special people, places and organizations of a special region in a special state.
In the middle of a life being well lived, David Schweidenback came to a realization: Society had taken care of him and he felt he had a debt — a debt he wanted to pay back.
The High Bridge resident is founder, chairman and president of Pedals for Progress, an organization whose mission is “To supply economic development aid by recycling bicycles and sewing machines in the U.S. and shipping them to the people of the developing world.”
“I really wanted to do more,” Schweidenback, 61, said. “I had a desire to give back.”
It is not surprising that he felt this way, considering he had experienced poverty and hard work, as well as living a life of service.
“I grew up very, very poor, but luckily I didn’t know that until I was a teenager,” recalled Schweidenback, a native of Dartmouth, Massachusetts. “My first job out of college I ran the production line in a carpentry factory. I built a lot of houses, but it didn’t really fulfill me.”
Schweidenback holds a bachelor of arts degree in German from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, so perhaps building houses as a commercial way of supporting himself may not have stimulated thoroughly enough his diverse personality or skill set. He had started out with the thought of being a teacher, worked in a factory and then ran a construction company. Anyone would say he had the ability of versatility.
That versatility has influenced his entire life.
Personal experiences yield great idea
Schweidenback worked from 1977 to 1980 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. He worked as a land surveyor surveying the tribal lands for the Federation Shuar, the political organization of the indigenous American Indian tribe The Shuar.
“The Shuar live at the base of the Andes Mountains where it hits the flat plane of the Amazon basin. I lived in a very small town called Sucúa in the state of Moron of Santiago,” Schweidenback said. “Sucúa was the end of the road, nothing but forest stretching for thousands of miles to the east. I lived in the town for doing calculations, but I worked out in the flat surveying.
It was in Ecuador that Schweidenback relearned the utility of the bicycle.
“In Sucúa, everybody walked everywhere they went all the time. There were no wheels, except (for those of) my landlord, Cesar Pena. He had the only bicycle for 500 miles. I was always amazed by his productivity. He got stuff done because he got there. Everyone was jealous of his bicycle.”
When Schweidenback returned to Massachusetts from the Peace Corps, he was unable to find work there, so he took a job on Long Island teaching at a middle school. He spent about two years on Long Island and during that time met and married Geraldine Taiani.
“I wanted to live in a more rural area, my wife was amenable as long as she could have her commute to New York City,” Schweidenback said. “We researched every train line leaving New York and followed it for about a two-hour commute: Westchester, southern Connecticut, mainline in Philadelphia, and out down the Jersey Shore were out of our price range. The Raritan Valley Line, however, seemed like the ticket. We drove out to Hunterdon County to see if it was the type of place we would like to raise our children. We found there was a train line from High Bridge which would get my wife into work in the city. So we packed up and moved to High Bridge.”
As time passed, Schweidenback and Taiani welcomed a daughter, Caterina, and a son, Lars.
Schweidenback taught school for a year but soon tired of it. “So I stayed home and became the first ‘Mr. Mom’ in 1984.”
“During the next couple of years, while I took care of my infant son during the day, I put two large additions on our house and took an old mill house and made it into a comfortable residence,” Schweidenback said. “Neighbors started offering me jobs, and by the time my son was 3, I was Schweidenback Construction. I was actually doing quite well, but I needed more challenge.”
A brief stint on the school board made him realize he didn’t want to get into politics.
Schweidenback was looking for something to give his extra time. All through the fall of 1990, every week on garbage day, he said, he would see “perfectly good bicycles” sitting next to trash cans.
“Every time, I would think to myself that those poor people back in Sucúa would die to have such a good bicycle,” he said.
He thought if there only was some way to collect them here to ship them there. Then fate loaned a hand.
“As we got into 1991, we had the first Gulf War and everyone was glued to CNN, my lucrative winter tiling jobs dried up and I was bored to tears with nothing to do, and poor because I was between jobs,” he said. “Driving down the street one day in early February, there was another bicycle sitting by the garbage. I then decided that I was going to try to collect 12 bicycles and ship them back to Sucúa in Ecuador — a one-time deal.
“I started asking people to donate their bicycles to me, and rather than getting a dozen, I got a dozen-dozen. I immediately realized the enormity of the possibility, Schweidenback recalled. “There were literally tens of thousands of bicycles readily available.”
Schweidenback started in February, and by that June had filed incorporation papers. A few other people started coming to help and Pedals for Progress was born.
Since 1991, Pedals for Progress has provided more than 142,000 bicycles and more than 2,800 quality sewing machines to the people of developing countries, providing a means to work or travel to work for people who previously found it difficult or hopeless.
Grateful countries, people praise the effort
You won’t see it in any history book, but Pedals for Progress, under the leadership of Schweidenback, certainly has boosted — and even changed for the better — economies of developing countries.
Pedals for Progress has shipped and distributed bicycles to many countries, including (in descending order): Nicaragua 41,022; El Salvador 24,457; Ghana 12,940; Guatemala 7,902; Barbados 7,876; Honduras 7,376; Panama 6,520; Uganda 4,140; Dominican Republic 3,560; Moldova 3,245; Eritrea 2,761; Albania 2,487; South Africa 2,180; Colombia 1,699; Ecuador 1,555; Vietnam 1,135; Fiji 1,012; Sierra Leone 938; Senegal 890; Namibia 824; Mozambique 800; Solomon Islands 623; Jamaica 600; Costa Rica 589; Mexico 553; Haiti 523; Sri Lanka 487; Venezuela 411; Kenya 403; Pakistan 400; domestic United States 220; Peru 143; Madagascar 72; and India 18.
Pedals for Progress also has shipped and distributed sewing machines to many countries, including (in descending order): Ghana 615; El Salvador 609; Nicaragua 337; Uganda 304; Guatemala 282; Tanzania 121; Moldova 112; Georgia 82; Albania 69; Yemen 60; Honduras 46; Costa Rica 37; Dominican Republic 30; Sierra Leone 30; Kyrgyzstan 25; St. Vincent 20; Cameroon 15; Panama 14; Jamaica 6; and domestic United States 3.
Wilfredo Rodriguez Santana, director of EcoBici and former mayor of the city of Rivas in Nicaragua, credits Schweidenback and Pedals for Progress with great gains in his city and country.
“My desire to work with P4P has to do with the culture of Rivense Rivas,” Santana said. “(Residents like bicycles), but locally available bicycles are very expensive, because they are imported, and most (people) do not have the possibility (capacity to) of buying a new one.”
Santana also explained that the flat topography of Rivas allows easy travel by bicycle. In addition, Santana said, bicycles move people from nearby communities — students, housewives and workers — to Rivas. Previously many people had to walk.
“Being mayor, I saw all these problems and had the support of Pedals for Progress, and since then we have given 28,000 (people) the real possibility of mobility. This has proved a super success through the years, thousands of (people) who have obtained a bicycle facilitating work, school, etc.,” he added. “I am very grateful to the staff of Pedals for Progress, staff of EcoBici and the American people, who have made it possible to realize this dream, the challenge of taking hold, now more than ever by oil pollution, and being more expensive every day, cycling has been, and always will be, the best means of mobilization.”
And that says it all.
Special Central Jerseyans appears alternate Mondays. Do you have a recommendation? Contact Cooke at 92 E. Main St. Suite 202, Somerville NJ 08876. Phone: 908-243-6603. Email: jjcooke@njpressmedia.com. Twitter: @JayJCookeCNHNT.
IF YOU WANT TO HELP
Pedals for Progress Main Office, P.O. Box 312, High Bridge, NJ 08829
Phone: 908-638-4811
Email: lori@p4p.org (Lori Smith, office manager)
Website: www.p4p.org
UPCOMING CENTRAL JERSEY BIKE COLLECTION
WHAT: Pedals for Progress bicycle collection (Sponsored by Westfield Rotary Club)
WHEN: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 11
WHERE: Board of Education Building, Walnut and Elm streets, Westfield, NJ 07090
CONTACT: Warren Rorden, phone: 908-232-6807 or email: wrorden@msn.com