As MassBike welcomes in the New Year, we first must acknowledge what this past year meant for us and for so many people who faced loss and tough challenges. We have all been forced to look at the world with new eyes, and to ask hard questions about how we treat each other and build a better world together. For MassBike this meant continuously pivoting our work to face the headwinds and manage each moment to maintain momentum for bike advocacy across the state. Through it all, we kept rolling. Below are a few notable inflection points that defined our year.

Earlier this year, MassBike teamed up with WatsonActive with support from the Mass in Motion program to offer grants up to $1,000 to organizations for bike-related activities. These grants sought to expand access to bicycling through local capacity building and support projects that work within the framework of the Four E’s of Bicycle Advocacy: Encouragement, Engineering, Education, Evaluation and Planning. Each of the E’s is viewed through the lens of “Equity and Inclusion,” with the goal to increase participation in bicycling for transportation, fitness, and recreation. 

MassBike was thrilled to award six organizations across the state with mini-grants to further bike-related activities across the commonwealth. We provided technical assistance to the implementation of the mini-grants through periodic check-ins to ensure the projects stayed on track in the extra challenging year that was 2020.