Our bike repair shop on Murtle Estate is an important way for our young people to gain confidence and learn new skills. The workshop has different workstations where young people of all abilities can engage in bike repair and maintenance.

The bike repair shop has been an excellent way to further strengthen our links with the wider community. Camphill School Aberdeen partners with Stella’s Voice and Police Scotland, who both provide us with bikes in need of repair. These partnerships have not only benefited our young people but have also enabled us to provide reconditioned bikes to those who need them the most. Stella’s Voice is a charity based in Aberdeenshire that helps at-risk children in Moldova, where young people from poor rural areas, with little education, make up a third of trafficking victims. By providing them with bikes, Camphill School Aberdeen is contributing to students’ ability to access transportation for school and extracurricular activities, sports, and community events, making them an active part of their communities.

Recently, we donated nine children’s bikes from our workshop to Sport Aberdeen for their Mini Riders pilot programme with Scottish Cycling. The bikes were given to Ukrainian children, aged four to eight years old, to help them with the transition between learning to ride a bike and then going on to join a youth club. This initiative aimed to cater to children who already knew how to ride a bike independently.

Often bikes that are donated to us would otherwise be headed to landfills, but we give them a new lease of life. Sustainability is important to us at Camphill School Aberdeen and forefront of sustainable practices for more than 80 years, and we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint through a number of initiatives. Our bike repair shop is helping our ambitions to contribute towards a sustainable future.

Nicolas Nino-Ramirez, Sustainable Development and Social Enterprise Lead at Camphill School Aberdeen, said: “Everyone has a meaningful part to play to protect our planet and create a more resilient future for us all, and we hope that the steps taken here at Camphill School Aberdeen make a big impact in the future.”