Byron is ready to hit the road on his mom’s new bicycle.

Learning to ride a bike is a classic experience of childhood. Wobbling down the sidewalk without training wheels, learning to balance. Finally, you are allowed to ride your bike to a friend’s house, or up to the gas station to buy candy and you fly along the street, the wind in your hair, unstoppable. It’s pure freedom.

For Langee Vicky, a seamstress at Mend, having a bicycle has freed up nearly two hours of her day that used to be spent walking to and from Mend. The seamstress saved up her earnings to buy a bicycle that makes her life easier and her children’s lives more fun. She’s been teaching all three of them how to ride around the compound where they live.

Now it only takes Vicky nine minutes to pedal herself to Mend. She saves money by riding to affordable outdoor markets to do her shopping. She has more time in the evenings to spend with her family and check her kids’ homework. And she still gets in her daily exercise riding up and down the bumpy roads of Gulu.

Like Vicky, many of the ladies at Mend have chosen to invest their savings in a bicycle. The Bike Tote from our Prosperity Series was designed to celebrate the freedom and mobility that come with the purchase of personal transportation.