Month: May 2012

This week we broke through 70,000 people registered on our sites and in our behaviour change programmes to date. That’s years of hard work in partnership with over 50 local authorities globally and more than 3,000 organisations. We are rapidly heading towards 7,000,000 miles and 23,000 non cyclists, which at a third of all registered participants, is an incredible achievement in itself.

It gives the team such a great feeling when we hit a new milestone. We love looking back at our achievements and all the people and lives we have touched in our mission to get more people cycling and sharing the benefits of riding a bike. At the same time we are looking forward to our continued journey, spreading the cycling love and every week helping new people to realise all the great benefits that riding a bike brings.

There are live Workplace Cycle Challenges in Greater Manchester, York and Chichester, with programmes about to start in Reading, Isle of Wight, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire. Then we cross into Wales for three Challenges – Cardiff, Swansea and Gwynedd & Môn – with the competition hotting up already. And that really is just the beginning!

With some exciting new developments underway, including the new Love to Ride web platform, our links with the Summer of Cycling campaign and new LSTF announcements out, we look forward to the rest of 2012 and getting many more people into the saddle and realising just how fun and enjoyable riding a bike can be.

Happy riding!

Challenge for Change are proud to announce the launch of their latest creation and exciting new web platform – Love to Ride. Love to Ride is the online cycling community that gets more people cycling.

Launching on 21 May, Love to Ride provides a range of ways for people to spread the love and engage their friends and family in cycling. This new web platform caters for existing riders who would like to see more people cycling, as well as providing on-going encouragement and support for new riders.

Love to Ride is a global platform, open to anyone to register, wherever they are.   However, we are all about creating change on the local level. Therefore, Love to Ride ‘Freemium’ sites will be established in 250+ towns and cities in the UK alone, e.g. Love to Ride Stevenage, Love to Ride Chichester, Love to Ride Edinburgh, etc.

Tina Kilner, from the Transport Strategy Team at Herefordshire County Council jumped at the chance to get behind Love to Ride. She said: “As Love to Ride local partners, we will benefit by being able to communicate effectively with a ready, engaged audience – promoting our other cycling initiatives and in turn growing the community. We love it!”

Challenge for Change Managing Director, Thomas Stokell, explained the concept behind this new Development, “We wanted to develop a smart, scalable tool that utilised everything we know about changing people’s behaviour and encouraging more people to ride. Over the last four years we’ve already encouraged more than 22,000 non-cyclists to get back on two wheels. Love to Ride will have a global reach, but a local focus. We want to work with local partners all over the world and enable them to use this smart platform as a way of effectively growing cycling in their area.”

Challenge for Change have chosen to work with the CTC – the UK’s cyclists’ organisation – as their country partners in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Gordon Seabright, Chief Executive of the CTC said: “We are delighted to strengthen and deepen our partnership with Challenge for Change and are very excited to be working on this fantastic new platform as a way of getting more and more people to enjoy the benefits of cycling.”

The Love to Ride platform will also run various local online programmes and cycle challenges – all designed to encourage more people to cycle, more often and more safely.

Check out www.LovetoRide.net to find out more, have a sneak preview of the site and from 21 May 2012 you can join your local cycling community and start spreading the love!

Tweet
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);