Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at HUB Cycling: Spring 2022 Update

To get more youth cycling, we need to understand the motivations and barriers that prevent young people from adopting cycling. This year, HUB Cycling formed a new Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) to engage youth in cycling advocacy. HUB Cycling wants to empower youth to learn, build, grow, and share knowledge on the future of building equitable and active transportation solutions. By creating a platform for collaboration, the YAC will explore the intersections of active transportation, social equity, the climate crisis, and other issues critical to youth.

We have continued to roll out our specialized community mapping program that enables Indigenous and racialized youth to use bicycles to access their communities fully. This free, eight-week program teaches them cycling safety skills, takes them on rides to essential spots in their local communities and provides them with a free bike, lock and helmet at the end of the program. Last year, HUB Cycling and Red Fox Healthy Living Society ran this program, with the support of the Greenest City Grant, in the City of Vancouver and reached ten youth leaders and 34 younger participants. With funding from the Government of Canada’s Healthy Community Initiative, this year, we are running this program in Surrey, New Westminster, and North Vancouver with eight youth leaders and 24 younger participants in each location. In July 2022, with a grant from Fraser Health’s Vision Zero program as well as donations from the Cross Canada Cycle Tour Society and the Rotary Club for Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge, we will be able to run this program for five youth leaders and 20 younger participants from the Katzie First Nation Band in Pitt Meadows. 

This year, we are running a StreetWise Cycling Education Centre at Trout Lake Community Centre for the first time. For this program, we are working with Spinal Cord Injury BC (SCI BC), a non-profit organization that helps people with spinal cord injuries, and related disabilities, adjust, adapt and thrive. SCI BC will be using the same space as us to simultaneously deliver bike fittings & assessments and cycling clinics for those who want to use adaptive bikes.
 
HUB Cycling wants to ensure that adults from marginalized and racialized segments of our community have the opportunity to learn the basics of cycling as well. This year, with funding from BC Government Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Grants, we developed a marketing campaign to offer free online Online StreetWise Cycling education (for adults) to equity-deserving groups. We worked with an individual who has the lived experience of an immigrant to take our course and share their learnings with other communities. We published this article in prominent non-English media outlets, including the Sing Tao, VanChosun, Filipino Post, South Asian Post and Asian Pacific Post, to reach people from South Asian, Filipino, Korean and Chinese communities.

We continue to expand Everyone Rides Grade 4-5 (ERG45). This year our Education team will target rural communities (through new subcontractors and ‘satellite courses’). It will prioritize schools with a high indigenous population and schools in neighbourhoods with comparatively lower median household incomes.

In HUB’s continuing efforts to decolonize and introduce more equity and inclusion, we have updated our policies to allow staff to substitute statutory holidays for other days that are more meaningful. While some use statutory holidays for (primarily Christian) religious observances, traditions or a chance to enjoy time with family and friends, for some people, these holidays are at best irrelevant and, at worst, associated with trauma given their historical and colonial meaning. We want HUB Cycling employees to be able to have time off to celebrate holidays and traditions that are meaningful to them across all religions and beliefs.