When it all goes wrong, it's only right that those of us who are able to help, step-up to do our part to support the community, so when Bike Shed was forced to close it's doors in London we decided to mobilise our community into a volunteer rider's group, to provide free courier-style services to support the fight against Covid-19. Motorcycles are used by first responders, couriers and food delivery drivers because they are fast and efficient, so we are using our bikes to collect PPE parts for assembly, deliver assembled PPE gear to front-line healthcare workers, along with food, medicine, and soon we will be distributing NHS lung-capacity testing kits, to see which unwell people might be better off in hospital than at home. There are lots of groups out there using Facebook and WhatApp to coordinate volunteers, but for motorcycle riders the missing piece of the puzzle was having a mobile app that collected rider's details with full safeguarding and legal checks, and tracking jobs for the pickup and delivery clients. We worked with a consultancy company, for free, called Wavestone, who researched lots of Apps, and after going through half a dozen, they connected us with Gophr who repurposed their commercial courier app for our use, again for free. Huge thanks to both companies for their help, support and hard work over the last 3 weeks of research and testing. Team Rubicon UK are working with the government and British Red Cross to coordinate tasks, and we are working with them to help those most in need get connected with our unique services. Indian Motorcycles also offered to cover the cost of services we could't get for free, and even threw in a couple of bikes with full-luggage for anyone who could make good use of them.

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To find out more, to join us, get our help, or discover more about our work, visit https://bikeshedcommunityresponse.com/

To get help from our Volunteers, Click HERE.