Meet AJ
When Edith and Jean Paul signed up their 11-year-old son AJ for Phoenix’s youth programs, they expected it would encourage his natural curiosity for how things work. They expected he’d meet friends. And they expected he’d put his usual “above and beyond” work ethic into any challenge he’d encounter.
But they didn’t expect that seeing him gain a passion for biking would meet an unspoken, but deep need they felt as parents—to connect AJ to their family’s roots in West Africa. When Edith was growing up in Cameroon, bikes were a luxury that most people didn’t have. But Edith’s father owned a shop that sold bikes, so she and her siblings grew up pedaling around town on their father’s shiny new sale bikes. She says it has been “a quick joy” to see AJ experience that same fun and freedom through biking—because it reminds her of her dad and her heritage.
Your donation will give students more than a chance to learn about bikes—you’ll bring joy to them and their families!
As a kid, AJ remembers riding a purple bike with training wheels around his Arlington neighborhood with his two older sisters. However, it wasn’t until 5th grade that his neighbor Tofik—a Phoenix youth and Earn-a-Bike graduate—taught AJ to ride without training wheels outside of their apartment complex. AJ was hooked!
AJ needed a new challenge: to learn how to fix his own bike. He tackled that when his parents registered him for our Earn-a-Bike program the next summer. He admits that he “didn’t really know anything” about mechanics and initially struggled with some of the skills—especially truing wheels. But AJ didn’t give up. Beneath his quiet, calm exterior, he has a deep drive to push through any challenges he faces.
AJ worked super hard to learn each new skill in Earn-a-Bike, earned a cool Schwinn (a big step up from his training wheel days!), and soon moved on to begin our Advanced Mechanics program. Seeing his hard work pay off has been a source of great joy for AJ. His face lights up when he says “I like working on bikes because it makes me feel like I accomplished something that most people don’t know how to do.”
Probably no one, including AJ himself, could have guessed that only three years after learning to ride a bike he would become a competitive racer. But he’s done just that—and he loves it! AJ says, “I like racing because it’s very difficult and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” For him, racing isn’t just physically demanding; it’s also mentally challenging. When he’s racing, he’s constantly analyzing the best approach to the course—judging when to go hard, when to preserve energy, and how to anticipate what’s next.
Thanks to the support of donors like you, biking has opened up one last source of joy for AJ: the chance to connect to his family’s roots in Cameroon.
AJ was born a year after Edith and Jean Paul immigrated to the U.S. with their two young daughters in search of better opportunities for their family. AJ has never been to Africa, which has been tough for his parents—who don’t want him to “lose his roots.”
But when Edith watches AJ fix bikes, ride, and race, she feels an immense sense of both pride and gratitude. Phoenix has not only given her son a wide range of fun challenges to tackle mentally and physically. It’s also given her a special way to connect with him and to share her precious memories from Cameroon.
It’s not always easy for parents to find common ground with their growing, changing teenagers, so we absolutely love that biking has been a way for AJ’s parents to experience a special connection with him!
There are hundreds of students like AJ who would benefit from the unexpected opportunities and joys that biking and mechanics have to offer—and you can make that happen! With your support, in 2024 more than 400 students can participate in our mechanics programs, race team, and more.
Would you make a donation to Phoenix Bikes to make this growth possible in 2024? You can bring joy to hundreds of teens—and their families—through a year-end gift to Phoenix. Your generosity can make stories like AJ’s possible!
Sincerely,
Emily Gage
Executive Director
P.S. Join HUB Club to keep the wheels of our organization rolling all year long by setting up a recurring donation with us when you choose the “Monthly” tab on our donation form.