KVIBE - Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange
KVIBE was born in 2005 out of an active living design grant that promoted physical activity in communities with a high rate of diabetes. Each year there are 400 donated bikes that are refurbished by youth and about 4000 bikes are repaired though 9000 youth service hours. 90 percent of participants surveyed reported riding their bicycles more often since starting at KVIBE and 63 percent of youth saying they have helped other to learn how to fix bikes. Youth drop into the space and are given the opportunity to earn a bike by learning how to fix and maintain a bike in addition to volunteering to help maintain the flow of the shop.
Join Us!
1638 Kamehameha IV Road
Honolulu, HI 96819
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday
11:00am-5:00pm
(808) 843-1545 / (808) 940-2266
KVIBE@kkv.net
“We want these kids to feel like they’ll never ride alone and that they’ll always have their community; supporting them and loving them. A community is like parts of a bike. You can’t have a bike without pedals. You can’t have a bike without a chain or wheels. Each part needs the other. So in the end, a community is a completed bike put together. At KVIBE, we’re building and repairing bikes, and in turn, we’d like to believe that we are building and repairing our communities too.” – Kuya Josh Kim
VISION
We respect the truth that we see our stories, our dreams and our authenticity with unique lenses. As we weave our framework of connections, we engage the young sons and daughters of liberation as future leaders by cultivating attitudes of resilience, self-respect, and civic leadership, and challenging institutionalized views of disparity in the Kalihi community. It is through each Cultural Circle space, that we acknowledge the individual histories of each contributor and support the youth to have a better understanding of the context of their lives. We see that each sharer of stories, practice their excellency by developing personalized social biographies that challenge colonial ideologies with ancestral pedagogies.We believe that the youth engaging in sustainable waste management and land-stewardship through bicycle refurbishment and organic reforestation at the Ho'oulu 'Aina Nature Park, strengthens their connections to Aina, others, past and present, and betters-self. It is through their being identified and recruited from the general pool of participants to provide peer mentorship and to receive greater responsibility as bike shop assistants, that these young kings and queens continue to be inspired enough to march on for liberation Nakem: soul consciousness.
