A criminology class at St. Thomas University raised over $600 on Nov. 8 and 9 for a local bike club in hopes of preventing youth crime across the city.
Emma McCorkell, a student who helped organize the bake sale and silent auction, said the CRIM 2383: Crime Prevention class wanted to help the Wil-Doo Community Bike Club after meeting the founders and seeing how much help they needed.
“We really just wanted to do it because it provides great programming for the kids on the north side,” McCorkell said. “It’s really great because if they don’t have a bike already, [co-founder] Jenn fixes the bikes for them free of charge, and she really wants to get some of the older kids into mountain biking … so they could really use the donations.”
The Wil-Doo Community Bike Club was started in 2014 by Jenn Wambolt and her husband. They were moved to start it after their community centre on the north side failed to receive enough funding for the year.
“When we did have the summer program [at the community centre], I volunteered with it, so I know the kids and had an idea how the program was run,” Wambolt said. “One of the things they did was walk them to Henry Park … that kind of gave me the idea, like, ‘Ah, I can bike them to all the pools.’”
Wil-Doo caters to about 66 families. It provides kids of all ages with mountain bikes if they don’t have one of their own, and get kids out on the city’s trails and takes them to public pools, movie nights and other events.
Wambolt said, as of Oct. 25, the group went on more than 35 rides this year and brought 40 kids along. They provided 36 bikes to those in need.
McCorkell said Wil-Doo is playing a role in crime prevention specifically by getting kids working together at a young age and developing important healthy relationships.
“It’s related to crime prevention in that it’s been proven that creating good social bonds and community programming, especially at a younger age, is shown to prevent crime,” she said. “If children are invested in their community, and they have great social bonds and they have friends and stuff, they’re much less likely to commit crime.”
Wambolt said keeping the kids out of trouble was one of their main reasons for starting the club. She said it keeps them from getting bored and it gives the communities across the city a sense of safety as well.
“It gets the kids out there. It’s very common nowadays that most of our children are inside, sitting in front of screens. Parents don’t encourage kids to go outside anymore,” Wambolt said.
“The visibility of having kids riding around and playing together – co-operatively, now [that] they know each other – it works.”
