A charity that helps provide food to families in need is helping bring bikes to remote areas a Montana Indian reservation.
Essential Eats Distributors Director Sara Wecker said all it took was one text from a prominent member of the Fort Belknap Reservation to get her organization into action trying to help a community in a state of emergency.
The group usually helps distribute food to remote areas of the Blackfeet Reservation but they also have a special program that helps provides bikes -- and after a phone call they are helping out a specific area in crisis.
"Fort Belknap, as you may be aware, is in the state of emergency because there has been so many suicides. And their spokesperson, Allysa Snow, reached out to us and asked us could you get some bikes for us," Wecker said. "And the area is so remote. And I reached out to the people who have helped us previously and they said yes."
She told MTN News that a bike can mean a lot to a child in remote areas of Montana -- especially a new one they can call their own.
"People feel forgotten and with one of the reasons that we are looking at a new bike -- it's simply a self esteem issue -- that a young person is entitled to a nice cool thing that there's personally," Wecker said.
Essential Eats Distributors is looking for around $5,000 total to bring 36 bikes to the Fort Belknap Reservation and you can donate through a well known Montana organization any time.
"Another wonderful thing is that Stockman Bank stepped forward and they said 'we would like to make it easy for anybody in Montana to donate'," Wecker explained. "And so you can go into any Stockman Bank in Montana and say 'I want to donate to bikes for Fort Belknap Essential Eats Distributors' and that money will be deposited safely in our account.
Butte Bike Lab is helping bring the bikes up to Fort Belknap and assemble them. The group helped Essential Eats transport and build bikes before when they took part in a similiar program for the Heart Butte area.
Click here for more infromation about the project.
