A pink bike with a pink flowered banana seat.
Sarah DellaVentura still remembers this special Christmas gift when she was 7 years old.
The Guilford resident said her dad made a string maze that her sister and she had to follow, to find this present.
“The string weaved in and out, outside, back inside, and all of a sudden at the end we got to the end of the string and there was a bike sitting there,” the 45-year-old recalled.
It is with these kinds of memories that Sarah DellaVentura and her husband, John and two daughters, Grace, 17 and Abby, 15, created the Wishing Wheels Bike Drive to provide new bikes and helmets to underprivileged children.
Fundraising is underway to raise $50,000 to purchase bikes. Through a partnership with Branford’s Zane Cycles the bikes are purchased in bulk and assembled by community members.
The Wishing Wheels Bike Build will be on Saturday, Dec. 13, 9 a.m. at the Guilford Fair Grounds, 111 Lovers Lane, Guilford. For more information visit bit.ly/4rxxU08.
The helmets are donated through a partnership with Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital.
John DellaVentura said some 600 people will participate in the one-day event.
“You don’t need any experience, we’ll have plenty of volunteers to show people how to build a bike,” he said.
Guilford resident Tara Tyre has been attending the event every year since it started with her husband, Michael and her children, Elodie, 15 and Ethan, 13.
“It’s a really great way to give to the community,” she said. “Every year it’s just something nice we can do together that also helps others.”
She said despite the freezing fingers, “it’s just such a good vibe.”
“It makes me feel really good and it’s good to know I’m helping out other people at this time of year,” said Elodie Tyre.
This tradition was started by John DellaVentura’S family in the late 1980s with three other Guilford families. They would pool their money and purchase bikes for local children on Christmas Eve and spend Christmas morning distributing them along the shoreline.
This project lasted five years and they gave away “at most a dozen bikes,” said John DellaVentura.
The project was all but forgotten until 2016 when John and Sarah DellaVentura, with children of their own, started this new tradition.
“We wanted to try and instill the thought of giving back and the joy of giving back with them,” said John DellaVentura, referring to his children.
That first year, the Wishing Wheels Bike Drive distributed 87 bikes. To date, 403 bikes have been purchased this year.
The bikes are distributed through various social service agencies including New Haven’s Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, or IRIS, New Reach and ARTE, Inc.; Connecticut Department of Children and Families in Milford, Bridgeport, Middletown and Waterbury; Branford Community Dining Room; Madison Youth & Family Services; Guilford Youth Services Bureau; North Branford Department of Social Service, East Haven Youth Service Bureau; UCFS Healthcare and the Connecticut State Police Emerald Society.
The bikes vary in size from 12 inches, with removable training wheels to 26 inches. They are specifically chosen for ages 1 to 20 years old.
John DellaVentura said the young adult bikes are “so important because a lot of times it’s their only means of transportation.”
Often there are recipients that come to the event, participate in the building and then receive a bike.
“These older ones that are actually brought to the event, unknowingly to get something at the end, it’s pretty special,” said John DellaVentura.
“You don’t expect, especially, a teenager to necessarily cry over a bike,” said Sarah Dellaventura. “But these kids never had a bike or got something of this significance and it’s just amazing to see, it really is.”
Saverio Mancini, a social worker in the Waterbury office of Connecticut Children and Families, will help distribute some 35 bikes.
Mancini said attending the build event for the last three years with some of his clients has been a “really powerful experience.”
The individuals he serves are between the ages of 13- to 23-year-old and some have attended the Wishing Wheels event and left with a bike.
“Very early in life they tend to receive things from the department,” he said. “I don’t think that they always understand the magic that goes into making that experience happen.”
By attending the bike build, “we can build stronger individuals and root them more in the community,” he said. “It’s a full circle give back opportunity.”
Current and past employees of Zane’s Cycles volunteer their time to serve as the quality control team, making sure the brakes, steering and tires are all ready for riders.
“Getting everything to work takes a skilled mechanic,” said Tom Girard, president of Zane’s. “We get the bikes so they’re mechanically right after they’re assembled. We get them ride ready.”
Girard said his team starts contacting him in August to sign up for the event.
Even though “you’ll leave there, you’re freezing cold, your hands hurt,” said Girard, the team is unanimous in their support of the project.
“It’s just as exciting for us to do it as it is for John to give them away and it is for the boy or girl at Christmas time to get them,” he said. “It’s very satisfying, gratifying to us to do this.”
“It’s our favorite event of the year,” he said. “It’s just heartwarming, it really is.”
The project is under the auspices of Roots4Relief, started by John DellaVentura in 2015.
“Our goal is to provide children with the necessary opportunities to give back to their community, and identify their own philanthropic potential,” according to the organization.
The DellaVentura girls are more involved with this project every year.
“We’re able to help a lot more,” said Grace DellaVentura. “We can spread the word more, with social media.”
Abby DellaVentura looks forward to this annual event.
“It puts a smile on a child’s face,” she said. “It makes them very happy and then it makes me, and all of us, happy to help a kid and their family during the holidays.”
“Having the whole community come and help with this is really special,” she said.
This involvement as a family is important to Sarah DellaVentura.
It is important, she added, “For them to understand and realize that they can give back and they can do good for others.”
John DellaVentura said he believes everyone “should have the freedom of having a bike.”
“Bikes are special because it’s not only getting kids outside, off their screens, they’re socializing, they’re playing with friends, they’re learning what freedom is,” he said.
“They’re also learning struggles, too,” he said. “What kid hasn’t learned that falling stinks, but if you keep practicing, you’re a pro.”
The Wishing Wheels Bike Build will be on Saturday, Dec. 13, 9 a.m. at the Guilford Fair Grounds, 111 Lovers Lane, Guilford. For more information visit bit.ly/4rxxU08.
Connect to the website by texting BIKES to 53555.