Along for the ride
Bank of America provides bikes for kids at The Armory
The kids hid on the first floor, getting fitted for bike helmets and
being given locks for bikes they haven’t even seen yet. All this while
300 Bank of America trainees assembled brand new Huffy bicycles last
week for kids they never met.
The new Bank of America hires knew they would donate these bikes as a
part of Bank of America’s Bikes For Kids corporate team-building
program. They just didn’t know it’d be so soon. That was until about
seventy-five mentees from Big Brothers/Big Sisters program and Alianza
Dominicana, a substance services abuse program, filed into the arena
of the New Balance Track and Field Center and each given a newly
assembled Huffy bike.
“First of all, this facility is fantastic for us,” said Big
Brothers/Big Sisters educational specialist Kathy Kunath. “With this
many kids this place is great. The kids are so humble and so grateful.
This opens up a whole new world for them because now they can
participate in bike riding. Some of these kids wouldn’t have this
opportunity otherwise. Our families just simply can’t afford it.”
The team-building program, run by an Indiana-based organization called
On Target Teams, hosted 300 new hires to the global corporate and
investment banking division from all over the world, including the
United States, Europe, Africa and Asia. As part of the Bikes For Kids
program, the trainees broke up into teams to compete in different tasks
to earn tools. In the end they all built their own Huffy bicycle only
to discover that none of the teams had all the necessary tools, which
forced separate teams to work together to insure all the bikes were
assembled.
“The organizations that are leaders, and companies they are a part of,
are led by visionaries and change people’s lives,” said Sam Hunter, the
program coordinator for On Target Teams.
The program manager for Bank of America, said one of the
most challenging parts is finding somewhere that can host an activity
for 300 people in one space. Plus, not only does it benefit the
children but the new employees.
“No one person can do these activities by themselves so there is a cross pollination here,” she said.
She was talking about activities that helped the employees build the
bikes. She could have just as easily been talking about influencing the
kids.