What Frie Fugle learned from schools in Copenhagen, November 2018- January 2019
In November Foreningen Frie Fugle were invited to celebrate students volunteers at Rysensteen High School. It was the community group Vesterbro Frivillig Center that organised the event. One of the activities the students do as volunteers, in their spare time, is cycling with elderly people through Cycling Without Age. Some of the students also help other students from foreign countries and who are learning Danish, with their homework.
As part of the activities that day, the founder of Cycling Without Age, Ole Kassow, came to present the background of the movement and to thank the volunteer students for contributing to make the world a better place. He did an exercise with them, where they all had to close their eyes and think back on their first bike, he walked them through the experience of the sound of the bike, how the wind felt in their hair and asked them which word best describes their feeling. Most of the students said “freedom”. This is the feeling Cycling Without Age wants to promote through cycling and giving elderly people more mobility. Vesterbro Frivillig Center offered this cake to the student volunteers with the text “Rysensteen rocks”
Ole Kassow also told the students that Cycling Without Age is a global phenomenon, and that they should always check out the world map on www.cyclingwithoutage.org to see where they can visit like-minded people when a lot of them go travelling after graduation.
In December and January, Foreningen Frie Fugle (Jens Erik Larsen and Pernille Vedersø Bussone) met with Kira Schlifer and Rikke Torp Villumsen, both teachers from Randersgades Skole, to share ideas about “Sustainable mobility, sustainable community” project and to learn from them as both teachers and Erasmus+ experts.
Randersgades Skole have an international profile, and previous experience with an Erasmus+ project, which Foreningen Frie Fugle can learn a lot from. They dream of improving the number of students who cycle to school and volunteer with trishaw rides at the local nursing home. Our project is an opportunity for Foreningen Frie Fugle to look at the Copenhagen cycling culture in schools with critical eyes and become ambitious about it, rather than leaning back and enjoying the status Copenhagen has as “one of the most bike-friendly cities”.
Rikke and Kira also gave us useful tips about travelling with students, and good ideas about the implementation of cycling promotion. Such as incorporating advocacy into drama and math lessons. We also took the opportunity to train Kira and Rikke in riding a rickshaw, which they learned very quickly.
