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Entries tagged: Vbt Bicycling And Walking Vacations

Imagine riding your bike through Tuscany, Italy — pedaling through picturesque medieval villages, cruising down country lanes lined with olive trees, hopping off your bike to explore white beaches and sip wine in local vineyards.

Picture yourself strapping on your walking shoes and traversing the cool, shaded hillsides of Italy’s Amalfi Coast, wandering through chestnut forests and lemon groves and learning culinary secrets from locals, with shimmering azure waters never out of view.

Well, here’s your chance to turn your best pictures of biking and walking into the trip of a lifetime!

The Alliance invites you to submit your images in the 2011 People Powered Movement Photo Contest. This contest aims to both celebrate the beauty and energy of active transportation and continue to build an online library of high-quality images that can be used by bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations across North America. Categories include:

• Advocates in Action
• Biking
• Biking and Walking
• Diversity / Equity / Building an Inclusive Movement
• Open Streets / Ciclovias
• Walking
• Women

Additional entrants in the Women, Diversity and Open Streets categories are particularly encouraged!

Individuals can submit up to 20 photo entries via the contest website until October 31. From November 1st to 31st, public voting will determine the finalists in each category. A panel of expert and advocate judges from across the continent will then determine the winners.

The overall grand prize is an all-expenses-paid biking or walking trip to Italy, from VBT Bicycling and Walking Vacations. Additional prizes include: A new bicycle from PUBLIC Bikes; bags from Ortlieb ; lights from Planet Bike; gear from Fyxation; helmets from Bern and more! Plus, all winning photos also will be featured in the March 2012 issue of Momentum magazine.

Enter today at www.PeoplePoweredMovement.org/PhotoContest

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

It’s impossible to capture even a hint of the energy and inspiration of an Alliance Winning Campaigns Training in a newsletter or blog post. Over the past few months, as we wrapped up our 2010 series, we tried to give you a taste, by sharing the rave reviews of amped-up participants. But short testimonials don’t do the workshop justice. You’ve got to experience it yourself to understand the impact.

In 2011, we’re giving you six opportunities to jumpstart your next winning campaign with the guidance of our expert facilitators and the assistance of your bike-ped peers.

In 2010, the Alliance hosted its three-day trainings in six cities across North America. In total, the workshops drew 117 advocates from a wide array of organizations. By working through the workshop’s curriculum, those participants tweaked or launched 59 different campaigns to boost biking and walking in their communities.

Now that it’s a new year, it’s time for a new round of trainings. So save the date for a 2011 Winning Campaigns Training in your area:

• April 1-3: Hosted by the Iowa Bicycle Coalition, Davenport, IA
• May 20-22: Hosted by Bike Maryland, in Baltimore, MD
• June 3-5: Hosted by the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, in Seattle, WA
• August 26-28: Hosted by the League of Michigan Bicyclists, in Lansing, MI
• October 14-16: Hosted by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, in Los Angeles, CA
• November 4-6: Hosted by the Palmetto Cycling Coalition, in Columbia, SC

Registration for each training is already open; click here to reserve your spot.

Like 2010, we’re happy to announce a measure of friendly regional competition for 2011, too. The host organization that draws the MOST participants to its training in 2011 will win a free international getaway from VBT Bicycling and Walking Vacations that they can raffle off or use as a fundraiser.

In 2010, Local Motion in Burlington, Vermont, packed their Winning Campaign Training with attendees and narrowly edged out the good folks in Oakland for the free bicycling trip to Italy valued at $3,500. “This goes to show that small communities can make BIG impacts,” Adele Dienno, Local Motion’s event’s coordinator, says of the organization’s win. “Thanks to all those who came from as far away as Nova Scotia; to VBT and its president, Gregg Martson; and to the Alliance and our presenters, Jeremy Grandstaff and Ron Milam.”

Who will take home the 2011 prize? Register now for a training near you.