Thanks to donations of used bikes, and
contributions of cash coming from individuals around the
entire Bay Area, and even as far away as Chico and Lake Tahoe,
our "Tour de Coloma" bicycle program for at-risk
youth is now a reality!
For everyone that was able to contribute - a
warm and heartfelt THANK YOU from all of us here at Boosters /
PAL! You have shown our kids that there are far more good
people in this world than bad, and have sent a loud and clear
message to our young people that they MATTER!
Thank you to everyone who called and offered
to loan us bicycles, the bike shops that are giving us
discounts on new bike purchases as well as free repairs of the
used bikes that were donated. We are including a partial list
of some of the donors. This list is by no means complete, but
for reasons of privacy, as well as requests from many donors
to remain anonymous, we are unable to list all of the
individual donors to our program. If you have made a
contribution, and your name is not listed, please email us at dmanson@berkeleyboosters.org,
and we will correct that oversight immediately!
We will be storing all of our bicycles in a
secure, padlocked and gated self-storage facility to ensure
that this never happens again. Although this adds another
$2,000 annual cost to our budget that we will have to find a
way to raise, we will at least be sure of providing this
program well into the future.
Thanks to these and others, we now have the
ability to serve even more kids than we originally had the
capacity for. We are now offering our biking program to 30
young people that otherwise would not be able to enjoy this
experience. You truly have made a lasting difference in the
lives of our kids. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank
you!
As with all non-profits, we have ongoing
needs for support. This program has other equipment needs
(spare parts, inner tubes, patches, tool kits, etc), as well
as camping permit fees, tents, sleeping bags, food, etc. We
welcome any and all donations. All contributions are
tax-deductible, and we have a 19 year history of maximizing
your contributions - 90 cents of every dollar contributed goes
directly to program costs, and only 10 cents to administration
and overhead (necessary costs of running the business).
Please make checks payable to:
Berkeley Boosters Association
P.O. Box 17
Berkeley, CA 94701
