Join Us

XAccess is pursuing a bold mission, and we need your help. If you believe in helping to bring innovation and dignity to human powered transportation in the developing world, if you believe in helping to provide the tools for economic empowerment, if you believe in the potential of developing countries to 'leapfrog' past the problems of pollution, congestion, traffic, and road deathcreate mission, then you belong on our team. Please read below to see how you can get involved with XAccess as a volunteer, donor, or partner.

Volunteering:

XAccess has many opportunities for volunteers, from helping to organize one-off community events such as welding classes, to computer and database work, to ongoing tasks at our home base. As a volunteer with XAccess, you'll learn about our vibrant organization from the inside, have a chance to work with bikes, and contribute to our efforts.  You can express a preference over which XAccess project you participate, or for which skills you want to use (computer skills, bike repair, etc.) "As an XAccess Intern, I got to work directly with the product, making prototypes of new cargo bikes, and improving existing designs." -- Matt Snyder, summer 2003. To get started, please send us an email or give us a phone call. Let us know how you'd like to contribute, and we will identify a volunteering opportunity for you.

XAccess volunteer Erin Anderson leading a class in South Africa.

Role	Project	Your skills/ contribution	Time commitment
Accounting/Legal/ Nonprofit Consultant	Help XAccess with the official business of running a nonprofit, such as: guidance regarding 501c3 issues, tax preparation, bookkeeping, IRS forms preparation.	The ideal volunteer has worked with nonprofits on 501c3 issues involving their nonprofit status, or has assisted nonprofits in IRS matters. Your expert advise and tax prep and accounting work will save us time and help us focus on our core projects.	Medium ongoing time commitment. Expect to spent a couple afternoons/week in the first few weeks of your work, tapering off to an afternoon/month until April tax season.
Product Designer	Join the XAccess team designing a next-generation cargo bike for the developing world.	XAccess is looking for a skilled product designer (preferably with bike-specific experience) to design and create plans for a new utility bike. We will use the plans to investigate new production strategies for our bikes in the developing world. This opportunity is ideal for someone who enjoys early stage design and prototyping projects.	Major time commitment. This project requires not only design and CAD skills, but thorough documentation. Volunteers interested in joining this team will "start out" on a smaller project and get a chance to try working with the organization, before plunging into the bike design. This project could be ideal for a design student as a "5th class." We expect the time committment to run at least half a year.
Bike Mechanic	Lovingly restore a beautiful, classic Chinese "Forever" bicycle, and install XAccess Xtrabike extension. (Take a look at a picture of a Forever here.)	You must have mechanical common sense and good bike assembly skills, though, as with most bikes found in the developing world, in depth knowledge of the latest Shimano XTR shifter won't help very much. Having a built-up bicycle will help us show our products and at events like the the SF Green Festival, and allow visitors to the bCAT to see and feel our work.	Minor-medium time commitment. This particular bike needs a new rear wheel, brake installation, and bolt-on installation of one of our South-African Xtrabike extensions. Will require two or three afternoons (probably including a trip to a nearby bike shop for the rear wheel.)
Database Architect	Help us create "Profit Cycle," a new knowledge base of cycling-related income opportunities for the Third World.	XAccess is looking for a skilled database architect to design and build an appropriate database for ProfitCycle. The ideal volunteer will have experience building web-connected databases from scratch.	This project is a fairly major commitment but one that will make a big difference to Xaccess. While it is difficult to estimate the exact hours for technical projects, it could be 5-10 hours per week over a one to three month span.
Welding Teacher * NOTE: Welding classes currently (11/02 - 1/03) underway at Berkeley CAT's Fabrication Lab, thanks to organizer Mike Cobb, and our wonderful teacher Gian! For info, call Mike Cobb @ 510-843-7339.	Help us design and produce a program to teach welding and bike sense to young people from the Bay Area, using the workshop at the Berkeley Center for Appropriate Transport (our headquarters).	The ideal volunteer will have a zest and talent for teaching, as well as solid, ideally professional, welding skills.	Medium time commitment. While the classes themselves may only last an afternoon, the publicity and planning could be 5 - 10 hours per week over 2-4 weeks.
Engineer / CAD wizard * NOTE: This project is in progress (11/02), but CAD wizards will always find a home at XAccess, so please write in to introduce yourself!	Help us publish the plans for the Extrabike on our web site so that hobbyists and small organizations can make their own.	The ideal volunteer will have strong CAD skills and will also know his/her way around a workshop. Access to design-ready computers and software is a plus.	Medium commitment. Depends on the skill level of the volunteer.
Graphic Designer * NOTE: First XAccess T-Shirt is off to the printers (11/8/02), but other challenging graphic design tasks await.	XAccess T-Shirt Contest!	Design a T-Shirt that we can sell as a fundraiser on our web site, and give to donors in thanks for their contributions.	Low-Medium time commitment. Depends on the skill level of the volunteer.

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Membership program:
The XAccess membership program allows you to participate in our exciting efforts to bring sustainable transportation to the neediest. We send quarterly updates of our progress to all XAccess members. Funds go directly to our general budget. If you are interested in making a larger donation, or contributing to a specific program, please read our Funding and Financials page and contact us directly

Below are the costs of annual membership. Please give as generously as you can:
__ $25 per year.
__ $50.
__ $100.
__ $200.
__ $400.

Membership donations $200 and larger receive recognition on our web site, XAccess.org .

Thanks for participating!

Please send your tax-deductible membership donation to:

Xtracycle Access Foundation
1336 Channing Way
Berkley CA 94702

Please include your current contact information with your payment. We will send you XAccess updates, invititations and other communications. Please include: phone number, US mail address, and email address.

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Lend us your eyes:
We need volunteers to make observations in foreign countries. With your observations from around the world, we are building an up-to-date knowledge base that will help us identify future XAccess projects.

The following brief but informative dispatch came from Jeremy Smith of Missoula, MT, after a Spring '02 trip to China:

Jeremy Smith's Report from Beijing, May 2002: As promised, I've kept my eyes out for bikes on my trip. Good news / bad news: You'll see more bikes here in a block than in all of Amsterdam; the Xtracycle hasn't got a chance. All bikes have baskets and half are attached to carts. You can't go five minutes without seeing someone carting 30 watermelons or equal amount. The Xtracycle is sleek, but it can't compete. Your best bet: cut the quality in half and the price to an eighth by opening a mass factory here. You'll never sell it here when a new bike costs $20 and your extension costs $200, but come visit and you'll learn more ways to move a two-wheeler than you ever imagined. Street repair guys stood at every corner, ready to fix a flat, patch a chain, or replace your seat for 50 cents. The car, though, I'm afraid, is ascendant. Rock on, Jeremy. A few notes on Jeremy's observations: Beijing has one of the strongest bike cultures in the world, and for all the right reasons: the bike is fast and cheap, and it scales well in extremely dense areas. XAccess normally does not consider selling the Xtracycle FreeRadical to end-users in developing countries. It's clear from this report that the FreeRadical, which sells retail for $329, would be out of the price range. XAccess generally focuses on selling racks that far cheaper -- $25 - $60, depending on the model. Can we classify China as a developing country? It's top cities are home to a growing manufacturing sector and a rising upper class, while some of its outlying areas have terrible poverty and AIDS outbreaks. Does China -- and other countries with extreme income class disparity, such as Brazil -- fit in the XAccess target market? What do you think? -PHF

The guiding principal is - Document Thoroughly. At the very least take notes in an XAccess journal, and take photographs. In addition, you might use an audio cassette recorder and collect quotes from people (if you've never done this while traveling it's worth it even without XAccess), send updates via e-mail, compose interpretative dance, or whatever it takes to share your findings. In the end just make sure to record what it is you discover. This is helpful for us so that we can... 1)Understand what you're talking about in detail. 2)Develop web content highlighting the work you're doing. 3)Construct a foundation for work we undertake in the future. This means writing proposals, and we like it when we can include pictures, first hand local knowledge/observations, and existing area contacts.

Participating is fun! Think of it as a scavenger hunt or your own James Bond reconnaissance mission. Before your travels, print out this page, and try to answer all of the questions, with as much useful information as you can.

1. Background.
   1. Who are you?
   2. Where are you traveling?
   3. What are the dates of your travels?
   4. How are you getting around? Where are you staying?
2. What's the Local Transport Mix?
   1. What are people using to get around? (bus, train, car, bicycle, hand cart, feet)
   2. Is local transportation heavily burdened? (If so, how? i.e. snap a picture of twenty guys pushing a semi trailer through town).
   3. If you really want to ring the bell on this one, and you're in an area that's particularly promising, sit at a cafe/street corner during rush hour and do a mini-survey. Spend an hour ticking off what goes by. Important categories to track are: trucks, busses (including mini vans of people), bicycles, bicycles carrying something over 15 pounds, handcarts, pedestrians. It's a nice way to spend the morning. Then imagine how nice that graph will look laid out in color - enjoy.
   4. If you're in a town, how do rural people get to/from town. (Note: if you're in a city this can be elusive. In Nairobi for instance, hundreds of people walk to work, but you only see them if you're up at 6:30)
   5. At the end of it all, is it a bike friendly place?
3. What's the local Bicycle Mix?
   1. What are the major brands? Prices?
   2. Where are they made? (Are they assembled locally, i.e. shipped in parts to nearby city)
   3. Are people carrying things/people by bicycle?
   4. Are people using 'modified bicycles' to carry things and earn money? (If so, can you document several of these small business models?)
   5. Who rides? men/women/kids/all?
4. Manufacturing indicators?
   1. Do you see people welding in small shops locally?
   2. What is the daily rate for skilled labor locally? unskilled?
   3. What is cost of steel? (If possible, stop by a local steel yard and ask for a price sheet.)
   4. Is there an "Industrial Area" in the town/city? What do they make?
5. NGO mix.
   1. Are there other NGO's in the area doing bicycle work?
   2. Visit them and say howdy, find out what they're doing. (This has been a great way for people traveling for XAccess to make friends and find interesting things going on.) One NGO to look for specifically is Pedals for Progress, they typically run strong projects.
   3. Are they working with lots of local folks, or mostly ex-patriots?
6. Reactions to the Xtracycle.
   1. What do people say when they see your Xtracycle? (Is it just that your bike has more gears? or do they really dig the idea of more capacity?)
   2. If you're not traveling with an Xtracycle (how unfortunate), show some photos. You can download some off of our website, or take some of your own. What's the reaction? Write one down verbatim.
7. Contact List.
   1. Make a list of contacts that would be useful to someone following up on your work? Existing NGOs, places to stay, welding shops that are interested, guidebooks you found helpful, etc.
8. Your Expert Opinion.
   1. And finally, what do you think? Remember the goal is "Bikes that haul, for all."
   2. Based on your expertise, what path do you see that will make that a reality where you are?

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Partnership Opportunities
As a small organization, we achieve our goals by working with fantastic partners. As you can read in the Network/Resources section, our partners represent industry, academia, engineering organizations, and NGOs. We bring such diverse people and groups together to achieve great goals in human-powered transportation.

To continue to achieve our goals, we seek to strengthen our network. Do you work for a bicycle-related or development organization? Do you have an idea for a partnership that can help Xaccess achieve our mission? Please contact us.

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Donating to XAccess
Our specific mission at XAccess is to bring innovative load-carrying bicycles to places where people can't purchase them today. This often means working in markets where there simply isn't a huge payout at the end of the day. For this reason, these places have been passed over by technologies which could make a huge impact.

We rely on philanthropic donations to maintain our budget.

Please see our Funding and Financials page for specifics about donation, current donor profiles, and benefits/impacts studies.

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Wishlist
We have received laptops, a phone, our desk, etc. from generous donors. We have managed to keep our costs low through the generosity of several key donors.

Please check in periodically with this page - you may be able to help us!

What is it	Details	Purpose
Good Quality Complete Mountain Bike Componentry or Used Mountain Bike	Donate your used bike, or good quality box of components to XAccess, and be part of the product development process at XAccess. We need parts that work together -- please save your odds and ends, and donate them to the Tinkers Workshop, our next door neighbors. We need a full kit of parts -- this is why it is ideal to simply donate a used bike. The quality level should be on the following list, the higher the better: STX, Deore, LX, XT. The easiest way to check the parts quality on your bike is to look at the writing on the rear derailleur.	We will use the componentry this coming year ('03) to build up prototypes of our new bike designs.
Flatbed scanner Note: Scanner and photocopier received! 11/2002.	Scans color photographs. Ease of use is a must. Compatible with PC and Mac.	Publishing photographs on our web site.
Digital Camera	Point and Shoot would be ideal. Ease of transferring images to/from computer is a priority.	Documenting our projects to post in our impacts and projects section of this site.
DSL service Note: As of 10/2002, we now share DSL with our neighbors at the BCAT, Tinkers Workshop, Pedal Express, and BFBC. $10 per month - CHEAP!	High speed internet service will help us get more done around the Berkeley office, and keep communications with the XAccess community strong. If you work for an Internet Service Provider and have a nonprofit program, please contact us at info@xaccess.org .	General web and email use.

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