The Cycle of Support: Mutt Society Gears Up to Empower Kids

It's the perfect time of year for kids to grab their bikes and get out to explore the world around them, be it a city street or some nearby woods. While many young people grow up with access to bikes, not every child has that same opportunity, and that's where Mutt Society comes in to help. They team up with fellow bikers to fix trails, support young athletes, and get bikes into the hands of underserved young people, including at an upcoming event in Pathways in Lynn. Trent Sanders, co-founder of Mutt Society, joins us to talk about how you can help them make sure every child has a bike to enjoy.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend. Each week
we come together and talk about allthe topics important to you and the place
where you live. So good tobe back with you again this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. Well. Nowthat the weather is warming up and school's
about to let out for the summermonths, it is the perfect time for
kids to get out there, grabtheir bike and just go explore, no

(00:28):
matter where that takes them, throughthe woods, the city, whatever,
as long as they get outside,feel free, really get going and get
the wind blowing through their hair.Now, many kids grew up with access
to bikes, including myself, butnot every kid has that same opportunity.
That's where Mutt Society comes in.Mutt Society started off as a pair of
trail riders who wanted to make adifference almost ten years ago, one of

(00:49):
them being Trent Sanders. They teamup with fellow bikers to fix trails,
support young athletes, and get bikesinto the hands of underserved kids. Now,
in just a few days, they'vegot an event coming up in Lynn.
We need your help to make sureevery kid who comes is going to
be able to ride off happy intothe Sunset, Trent joins us. Now,
Trent, it is great to haveyou back here on the show.
For people who might not have listenedbefore. Tell us a bit about Mutt

(01:11):
Society to get us caught up.So the Muth Society was found in twenty
sixteen. We were quickly trying tofind a brand to organize a group of
people to go down and help withthe aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and we
were all ethnically Mutts, so wenamed ourselves the Mutt Society. But it

(01:33):
did have a lot to do withhelping with bike communities, exposure and getting
kids on bikes that don't have means. Yeah, and that's important. Tell
us about why it's critical for kidsto have access to bikes. It's a
good question. Children that I grewup with always had that advantage in life,

(01:53):
and I never really thought about thebenefits. But bicycles do play an
integral role, in my opinion,in the growth of our youth and has
a lot to do with freedom,has a lot to do with just mental
health, and then in some ofthese communities it has even more to do
with transportation, either to school oreven in some cases we support young adults

(02:19):
and adults getting to work and thingslike that. So in the past you've
given away more than eight hundred bikesso far to kids all over the Northeast.
Before we talk about this upcoming eventin Lynn, give us a bit
of a rundown of how you didthat. You've worked with places in Vermont,
here in Massachusetts, New Hampshire.What was that like we've spent the
last three or four years very muchor COVID was very much a catalyst to

(02:43):
us changing our mission from being moreinternational to being more local. And we've
just worked with a lot of differentmunicipalities in the Lakes region of New Hampshire,
a little bit in Vermont, andthen very much so in Lynn Learning
and Framingham, Massachusetts, to justwork to get you know, bikes from

(03:06):
people donating or raise money to providebikes for kids that just don't have that
advantage. All right, So thisupcoming event, it's going to be in
line. You're going back to Lynnon June fifteenth. And the issue here
right now is that you need bikesto give to the kids, because well,
you know, what's the event withoutthe bikes. So tell us about
what's going on here. So everyyear for the last three years, we've

(03:29):
done the one hundred Kids on Bikesevent in Lynn, Massachusetts. It's in
conjunction with the Pathways EESL program thatthey have there. It's to provide all
the students' children bicycles. This yearit'll be about one hundred and fifty bikes,
which if you can imagine gathering donatedbikes, you need around two hundred

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and two fifty to find all thesizes that you need. And so at
this point, I actually I almostwas late to this meeting because I'm organizing
the bikes that I already have outin the back behind our office. And
at this point we have about ninetybikes and we're three three weeks out.
So any donations are extremely helpful.We can pick up bikes at north Shore

(04:19):
Cycles in Lynn, Massachusetts, orif there's you know, significant bikes in
a certain community, we can goand pick those up, or they can
be dropped off at my office orat my home if anybody's interested in the
address, I can provide that offline. And also monetary donations at this point

(04:41):
in the game are extremely helpful.So we say there's an average of about
two hundred and fifty dollars a bike. We've had in the past, we've
had a couple of you know,thousand and two thousand dollars donations that have
been extremely helpful in you know,ordering either from Walmart dot com or from
a bunch of are different local bikeshop partners. So yeah, we're just

(05:05):
kind of grinding and trying to getthe rest of the necessary equipment to make
this happen. Yeah, and looklike everything is super expensive right now,
which I'm sure does not help inthe least, right. Yeah, it's
interesting. And we've also tried toprovide more students this year than we have
in the past helmets and training wheels, So we've had some expenditures there,

(05:30):
but we've gotten much better at that. In the past years that's been not
an afterthought, but just something wecouldn't afford to do. So this year
we've been fortunate enough to have NorthShore Cycles in Lynn has provided the helmets
for the kids, and one ofmy friends, Tom Lou has provided I

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think he purchased twenty five or thirtysets of training wheels, which is really
amazing. So which size bikes.If somebody is listening and they're like,
look, I just want to gobuy a couple bikes for you. Guys,
what bikes specifically are you short onright now? Twenty six inch and
twenty four inch bikes are In agroup of kids between zero and or let's

(06:13):
say one on zero into eighteen,the most needed are always twenty six and
twenty four inch bikes. Pretty flexiblebetween those. If a kid is you
know, five, two and sixteen, he can hear she can generally fit
on either either one, but betweentwenty six and twenty four inch bikes are
the ones that are the most important. At this point. We do need

(06:35):
some random ones that are twenty fourteenand twelve inch, but we should be
able to collect those. The mosthelp would be either again in monetary donations
so I can just order them atthe last minute, or used. Used
bikes are absolutely welcome in any size, but twenty six and twenty four inch

(06:55):
would be amazing. Yeah, let'stalk about the used bikes really quickly.
So say somebody's child has grown outof a bike, you're still okay with
taking that you don't have to buynew? Correct? Correct? Yeah.
In fact, just to give alittle bit back to the environment, it's
actually much better if we do alluse bikes. The kids do not care
about the color, the size,the shape, anything. They just care

(07:16):
that they have a bike as longas, of course it's safe and it
works. So use bikes are alwayspreferred because they're sitting in the back of
someone's garage. Someone's going to takethem to the dump. If we can,
you know, pass it along toa deserving young set of hands,
then that's certainly the best. Somebikes, it's usually pretty obvious if it

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just can't be saved. Some bikesjust can't be saved, and they do
offer a little bit more of achallenge if they're dropped off with us,
because we have to figure out whatto do with them. But generally speaking,
if someone has a bike and they'renot sure, we'll take it and
figure it out. Yeah, likeif maybe they need a new chain,
or if there's like something that needsto be fixed on the handle, for

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example. I'm not the bike expertyou are, but say, like your
kid just kind of dinged up thebike a little bit, there's a pretty
good chance you're going to be ableto use it. Yeah. Yeah.
The first year that I did this, I stayed up all night a few
nights, just worried about if thekids would like the bikes that we were
getting in that anxiety was unfounded.They don't care at all. Absolutely,

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So besides the event, we'll goover the details in a minute. What
else are you working on over atthe society? You guys are pretty busy.
We are pretty busy. We alsodo an athlete program that helps kids
that are aspiring to be professional athletesand a sport that's rather hard to break
into without financial backing, so wedo support some athletes from different countries.

(08:50):
We have an Iranian rider, wehave an Italian rider, we have a
Colombian rider, all of which hadpretty serious need in terms of bike or
support in their event fees or anythinglike that. So we have an athlete
program. We also work with LazarusHouse and Lawrence to provide bikes. Generally

(09:11):
speaking, it's in the holiday months, but that is for that is not
specifically to the youth. That's alsoto the They actually run a soup kitchen
there, so it's two individuals thatjust need it for transportation in general.
And one other thing that I thinkwe're really proud of is last year the

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Framing School district needed some support becausethey didn't have enough bus drivers, so
they had actually closed down school transportationand given public transportation vouchers to their students.
So we worked with GT Bikes inthe Framingham School District to kind of
broker a deal for about two hundredbikes for kids that were in that two

(09:58):
mile radius. That was that wasreally special to us. So that was
another cool thing that we did.Let's not you know, diminish what you've
been doing, you and the othermembers of the Mud Society. You're doing
a lot, especially helping these kidsat Pathways, which I know this is
not the first year you've been doingthis. You were on the show last
year talking with me and Pathways.I'm sure super appreciates your help. Yeah,

(10:20):
it's an amazing program over there,and we really enjoy working with them.
It's something that we've been doing obviously, as I've said a couple of
years now, so things run rathersmoothly as long as we get the funding
and the bikes. So I thinkwe'll continue to do the Pathways program for
as long as we can. AndI appreciate you saying that that we're doing

(10:43):
a lot. It means a lot, but yeah, you can always do
better and more and it's something thatwe don't take as critique as much as
we do, just like an inspirationto keep it rolling. Yeah, no,
I feel that I understand. Solet's talk then about how people can
help you do it this time.So this is happening in Lynn on June
fifteenth over at Pathways. Give usa reminder again what you're looking for,

(11:05):
what you need and how people canget it to you. So what we
are looking for this year are eitherphysical bike donations at north Shore Cycles in
Lynn or Cycles et cetera in Salem, New Hampshire, or at my house
or office, which you can dmus on our Instagram. Mutt Underscore Society

(11:26):
is our tag there we're also lookingfor and sometimes at this point it's a
little easier to get monetary donations.We equal each bike at two hundred to
two hundred and fifty dollars and youcan donate on our website. Again,
you can also directly contact me forlarger donations or any sponsorship opportunities that we

(11:48):
have. There's always a custom programthat we could build around something that wanted
to give back, and then it'sa very small organization, so anytime you
reach out on the website at mysociety dot org or on our Instagram.
It'll either be myself or my businesspartner Andrew, who can get back to
you. All right, beautiful,Well, Trent, thank you so much

(12:11):
for all you're doing for our kids, and let's get those bikes to you
and I hope you have a greatevent. Thank you so much. I
really really appreciate the time. Havea safe and healthy weekend. Please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.