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This spring, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition is using free tune-ups to get tuned in to the needs and desires of the Spanish-speaking community.

Building on its Bici Centro community bike shop program, the SBBC is dialing up its Spanish Language Outreach program with a new Taller Movil Comunitario de Bicicletas (Community Mobile Bike Shop) that aims to listen to the voices of Santa Barbara’s often-overlooked cyclists.

Carmen Lozano, one of the SBBC organizers, says the group has always had a Spanish-language outreach component, but new and larger interest last year spurred a renewed push and exciting pilot program. “We read the invisible cyclist article published a while ago, and it really resonated with us,” Lozano says. “Our main task is to take the opportunity to start a dialogue with the Spanish-speaking cyclists in our town and find ways to hear their needs to better serve them.”

They came up with an idea that connects service and dialogue. Starting in April, a mobile bike repair shop, mounted on the back on an Xtracycle, will roll into the predominantly Latino Westside or Eastside neighborhoods every Saturday to provide free repairs and educational resources to residents. SBBC’s bilingual staff will help fix flats, adjust brakes, and teach basic bicycle maintenance. But, it addition to better bicycling, the effort also serves as a conversation starter.

“We’ve created a bilingual survey and prepared bilingual outreach materials to involve the business and other agencies in the area where the workshops will take place,” Lozano explains. The short, one-page survey (created in both Spanish and English) asks residents if they’ve heard of the SBBC or Bici Centro, and allows them to weigh in on how useful the group’s various services have been to them. It also gives respondents the chance to make suggestions: “Que servicios adicionales podrian Bici Centro y la Coalicion de Bicicletas de Santa Barbara ofrecen en el futuro?” (What additional services would you like Bici Centro and the Bicycle Coalition to provide in the future?)

“Our hope is to run the clinics for three months in the spring, get more people to know us and collect lots of information from folks taking the survey,” Lozano says. “It’s just a pilot project, but we believe that the data will collect will give us enough of a sample. We’ll analyze it and based on the results we hope to implement requested changes in the fall.”

Learn more from the SBBC here.