The Bike Scouts Project

With 81 lives lost and 83 areas in a state of calamity, the Bike Scouts in the Typhoon Kristine-affected areas cannot wait for others to decide that people in our communities are worth helping or saving, and so we take action where we are with whatever we have. This is the power of community. #wearebikescouts

There is another set of storms headed towards the Philippines, and this time these storms are most likely going to make actual landfall. One of the places that will most likely be hit is the Batanes Islands that is still recovering from the impact of the recent category-4 Typhoon Julian. Bike Scouts are focused on the preparedness aspect of local resilience, and not just with words or token activities but the actual things that people need where they live with their loved ones, friends, and neighbors to survive well when the coming storms arrive at their doorstep. Tonight, a set of high-capacity solar power kits and panels from Bike Scouts and Hive Energy PH based in Calapan in Mindoro Island, a valuable Bike Scouts resilience partner and community member, is on the only ship that sails between the capital city of Manila and Basco in the Batanes Islands. When the solar power kit arrives in Batanes, it will provide an additional option for resilience for the people on Basco just in case everything else fails. We worked hard with zero resources and zero support to get this small act of resilience done before it's needed on the ground, just like how we worked with Tern Bicycles to deliver the Short Haul Cargo bike long before there was a need for resilient mobility - because this is what the work of creating resilience actually involves. Bike Scouts is one of the very few resilience initiatives (and platform) where real people in the real world take action in their own community - and it's because 99.9% of the time they're the only ones who will actually step-up and show up to keep people safe and prepared without expecting anything in return in the places we call home. This is why we ride. #hiveenergyph #ternbicycles #wearebikescouts

Every time a disaster happens in the Batanes Islands in the extreme north of the Philippines there's always a good chance that the island community's water supply will be cut off . The water pipes that brings water to people on the island from the upper slopes of the 1,009-meter high Mount Iraya at the center of the main island is regularly destroyed by rockslide caused by heavy rains, and sometimes even earthquakes. Whenever this happens, the people of Batanes band together to send climbers up the mountain they call locally as their "waterboys" to haul materials and tools to repair the damage and restore water supply. While the repair work is happening, the waterboys also bring down drinking water for the people in the town. This time around, the delivery of the much-needed water is done by the Bike Scouts' Tern Bicycles Short Haul cargo bicycle. This is what true local resilience looks like. This is what happens when a brand genuinely invests in people and communities. It doesn't get more local and authentic than this. This is why we ride. #ternbicycles #ternbicyclespilipinas #wearebikescouts

Tern Bicycles is the only bicyle brand in the world that actually invested in such a wild idea as the volunteer bicycle messengers for disaster response of The Bike Scouts Project in the Philippines. Today, Tern Bicycles is the only bicycle brand in the world that is directly deployed on the ground helping communities thrive and survive in the aftermath of category-4 Typhoon Julian that brought sustained winds of up to 240 km/h (150 mph). Tern's Shorthaul cargo bike is on the ground with the Bike Scouts at the frontlines of climate change and climate-driven disasters. We are grateful for the resilient mobility that Tern Bicycles has given the Bike Scouts that allows us to bring courage wherever it's needed, hope, where there is none. We want to say thank you to the visionary team captain and founder of Tern, Joshua Hon for investing in true local-community resilience and preparedness long before there's a need - as it is the true nature of preparedness. Bike Scouts is the only continuously-operating volunteer bicycle messenger service for disaster response in the world with actual on-ground experience in some of the most severe disasters including typhoons, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and a global pandemic. We serve where nobody else will go. We ride Tern Bicycles. #ternbicycles #ternbicyclespilipinas #thisiswhyweride #wearebikescouts #typhoonkrathon #typhoonjulian

TYPHOON UPDATE: On-ground report sent by Bike Scouts BATANES earlier as Typhoon Julian is declared a category-3 storm with a chance of intensifying into a super typhoon. Rappler reports that as of 4PM earlier Julian was located 235 kilometers east of Calayan, Cagayan, moving northwest at 15 kilometers per hour (km/h). The typhoon currently has a maximum sustained wind of 120 km/h, while its gustiness is up to 150 km/h. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said Julian will intensify in the next 24 to 36 hours as it heads for the Batanes-Babuyan Islands area. It might even strengthen into a super typhoon.

As Bike Scouts volunteer bicycle messengers for disaster response, our reaction whenever we hear someone say the words "many areas remain inaccessible" we know right away that it means someone failed to understand about how disasters work. A day after Typhoon Julian devastated the Batanes Islands in the Philippines we are left to scramble for resources to deliver help that's desperately needed even as you read this, because even though we fought really hard to find support in the past twent-four months to prepare for this very moment true preparedness is not really a priority for anyone. We knew that a storm of this magnitude was going to happen and we knew where storms like this are likely to make landfall, it was just a question of when. The elders of the Ivatan, the local people of the Batanes Islands are saying that they've never seen a storm this vicious and as destructive in all of the written and oral history of the islands. That says a lot about this latest storm because, historically, Batanes has been in the path of almost all of the worst storms to pass through the Philippine archipelago. We know all of these things because Bike Scouts are local to the places where we serve, including Batanes. While others are still preparing to fly in we are already on the ground. In fact, we've been on the ground in this and many other places visited by severe storms and all manner of disasters across the Philippines in the past ten years - wherever help and hope is needed most, when they're actually needed. We are, however, the least supported because our service to the 700,000 people in all of our various communities nationwide in the Philippines is invisible. We work on the essential things according to local context instead of a checklist of items that have nothing to do with local needs. The woman on the bicycle in this video is a professor, a mother, an athlete, and she is a team leader of Bike Scouts Batanes. She has been providing real-time data abd reporting about Typhoon Julian as well as help for whoever needed it before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the storm. Another Bike Scout team leader has been leading search and rescue and helped prepare local houses for the storm, as it is the tradition among the Ivatans of Batanes. Community helps itself. This is why we ride. #wearebikescouts

Bike Scouts is a disaster tech startup in the sense that we've built our own technology and we work as a platform. The success of the value for people we've been providing for the past ten years is essential, but not something that we can celebrate because we don't wish anyone to ever have a need for us to show up at their doorstep. But no matter how hard we try to be unecessary, the growing scale and frequency of climate-driven disasters means we are working 100x more than the support we ever find for the service we provide that nobody gets to appreciate unless it's one of the 700,000 times in the past 10 years when we're the only ones who actually show up when everything else fails. We are Bike Scouts. #thisiswhyweride

Technology is an essential tool for progress and daily living. However, what's often left out of the conversation is that it requires a person with a sense of responsibility for others to put technology to actual good use. The person in the photo is Byron, one of the Bike Scouts' team leaders in Batanes Islands, Philippines who was on the ground when Typhoon Julian made landfall. Byron deployed a Starlink dish in Batanes connected to the powerline of a submersible water pump and is now providing free internet access to everyone in the island community who needs to reach out to their loved ones. Bike Scouts BATANES reports that it will take up to a month before power is restored in the islands. We are working to find support so we can transport two units of our emergency solar panels and power kits provided by Hive Energy PH to Batanes. If you'd like to fund or support this delivery of very essential equipment and supplies please message me directly. Any support you give goes directly to the mission we need to accomplish and can be tracked in real time as long as internet is available. We are local. We are already deployed. We are Bike Scouts. #thisiswhyweride #wearebikescouts

A few days after sharing my experiences on the value of communities at the amazing Echelon Philippines tech event I'm back on the ground with our teams and communities practicing what we invite others to believe in. All of the things you see in these pictures (and many other amazing things that you don't) were put together locally, purely by local effort of community members who work in education, government, business, and the very talented students of the Lydia D. Villangca Trade School of San Rafael, Bulacan who organized the program, produced the materials, shot video and pictures of the event, and even prepared delicious refreshments for guests - and they are now all Bike Scouts! This is exactly what I meant when I shared at the Echelon event about the difference between a crowd and an actual community. A crowd easily gathers wherever there's noise, but a community are people who come together who talk to each other and agree to do something together for a common purpose. When it comes to building communities the Bike Scouts have the most genuine and long-term impact because we don't fabricate projects just to make a noise that gathers a crowd for visual effect. In fact, my only role at this event was to show up and say "hello," just because I started the Bike Scouts (and of course, I also delivered our initial Resilience Workshop program). In other words, I'm proudly irrelevant as an outsider which, for us in the Bike Scouts, is the true test of localisation. This event marks the first of many Resilience Workshops the Bike Scouts will be doing across the Philippines in the coming months to give all of the most important knowledge, skills, and tools that people in communities need to create the genuine local community resilience they need - on their own terms, with local pride and dignity, and informed by local context. We are grateful for the generous support that now makes the Bike Scouts Resilience Workshops a reality given by the amazing people from Malaysia-based Air Asia Foundation and their Philippines-based team that we are immensely grateful to for believing in the power of community. Thank you so much to the visionary people behind Air Asia Foundation for taking the step with us towards real and long-term local community resilience in the Philippines' most disaster-vulnerable areas. Bike Scouts proudly rides with Air Asia Foundation on the ground delivering courage wherever it's needed in the midst of disasters, and hope, when there is none. This is why we ride. #airasiafoundation #wearebikescouts

When technology is in the hands of those who truly need it, it can create real change. The Superscout app of Myles Delfin and his The Bike Scouts Project team embodies this vision. It empowers communities to develop tailored solutions that address their local challenges, specially during typhoons, flooding and earthquakes. By fostering collaboration and prioritizing real-world needs, The Superscout app paves the way for resilient communities and a brighter, more sustainable future. Be part of the solution. Sign-up here: https://superscout.app/ #communities #resiliency #sustainability #climatechange Vonn Vincent V. Tanchuan Jeuls Hermosisima Angie Tijam - Tohid iea Nepomuceno