WE BELIEVE EVERYONE CAN RIDE

You want your special needs family member to ride, and we believe they can. iCan Bike Alpharetta is a part of the iCan Shine family of programs. Every year members of the Alpharetta Police Department's Community Services and Bike Patrol Units work together to bring this wonderful program to Alpharetta. We spend one week out of every summer teaching 40 special needs individuals how to ride a two-wheeled bicycle without the need for adaptive devices. 
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If you or someone you know would like to help our Officers with this  amazing program please contact us today- we cannot host a program like this one without community support. 

MAKE A DIFFERENCE
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Volunteering with iCan Bike Alpharetta is unlike any other volunteer opportunity out there- we promise. Volunteer for the entire week, or a single 75 minute session; either way you are making a difference that lasts a lifetime and you can't beat that. 

volunteer

LEARN ABOUT ICAN SHINE'S PROGRAMS

​iCan Shine provides quality learning opportunities in recreational activities for individuals with disabilities. By creating an environment where each person is empowered to maximize their individual abilities, everyone can shine!

iCan Bike programs are for people with disabilities ages eight and up.  We understand that the vast majority of people with disabilities never experience the thrill of independently riding a two-wheel bicycle during their lifetime. For example, recent research shows that over 80% of people with Autism and 90% of people with Down syndrome never learn to ride a two-wheel bicycle.  Defying these odds is why we exist!
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Our adapted iCan Bike program resulted from more than twenty years of research by Dr. Richard E. Klein, a mechanical engineering professor, and his students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Klein retired from his academic career at the University of Illinois in 1998 and held the first bike camp in 1999 in La Crosse, WI.
In the ensuing years, Dr. Klein and his wife, Marjorie, invested a significant portion of their lives in growing the bike program to three fleets of bikes and approximately 30 camps in 2006. Today Dr. Klein and Marjorie are principals in Rainbow Trainers, Inc. (www.rainbowtrainers.com) which is the manufacturer of our adapted bicycle equipment.
We offer the following two iCan Bike program options:


By far, the most popular of our adapted bike programs is our iCan Bike camps which occur predominantly in the summer months but also during week-long school breaks.  For our bike camps, we collaborate primarily with local charities, parks and recreation departments, colleges, universities, motivated parents and other individuals we refer to as our camp ‘hosts’ who secure a local facility and recruit riders and volunteer spotters for the 5-day (M – F) camp.
Hosts pay us a fixed fee to conduct these 5-day camps which consist of five 75-minute bike-riding sessions per day with a range of four to eight riders per session.  The number of riders per session depends on the square footage of the indoor riding area of the host-provided facility and the host’s recruiting efforts.  The fixed fee for our iCan Bike camp remains the same regardless of how many riders the host facility can accommodate (between 20 and 40 riders).

How Our Bike Program Works

Years of research, months of planning by your local bike camp host and hours of volunteer ‘spotting’ by wonderful, concerned people from your community lead to your child attaining confidence to last a lifetime – achieved in just 5 days attending for 75 minutes each day.  At our iCan Bike programs, riders learn to balance, pedal, steer and take off on their own, many in five days or less – a feat parents say is miraculous. 
We adapt our approach to each individual rider based on the accommodations they may need to benefit the most from our program.  Our staff are well-trained and experienced in working with many different types of disabilities and behavioral challenges.  We stock all our fleets of bike equipment with ‘tricks of the trade’ motivational tools that we find are often successful to motivate riders to participate and succeed.

Two volunteers are assigned to each rider to serve as their ‘spotters’ providing physical support, motivation and encouragement throughout the week.  While all individuals learn at their own pace, some will be ready to ride on two wheels as soon as the third day, and historically approximately 80% of the individuals who participate in iCan Bike ride a two-wheel bicycle independently (at least 75 feet with no assistance) by the end of our five day program.  The remaining 20% make tremendous progress towards this goal and leave our programs accompanied by parents and/or siblings trained as ‘spotters’ to pick up where we leave off!

Generally speaking, we try to establish early on at our iCan Bike programs that learning to ride is fun but serious business.  We use a ‘kind yet firm’ approach so that riders cooperate with the program protocol. We take a team approach whereby we collaborate with parents for their advice and tips on how to most successfully work through any behavioral difficulties presented by their rider.

Benefits of Riding a Bicycle

Our program works! Success rate of riders independently riding a bicycle (at least 75 feet with no assistance) by the end of our iCan Bike programs is approximately 80% and all riders progress and gain skills during the week with benefits including:

• • Increase in self-esteem and confidence spills over into many other aspects of their lives
  • Positive changes in family dynamics
  • Inclusion opportunities
  • Independent transportation
  • Increase in recreation that improves physical fitness, mental health and overall quality of life
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Requirements for Participation

To ensure the safety of our riders and the best use of our limited resources we have established certain criteria that all riders must meet to be eligible to attend an iCan Bike program.  The rider must:

• • be at least 8 years old (no upper age limit)
  • have a disability
  • walk without an assistive device (e.g., walker or cane)
  • be able to side step swiftly to both sides
  • be able to wear a properly fitted bike helmet at all times when on a bicycle
  • have a minimum inseam measurement of at least 20” when measured from the floor wearing sneakers
  • not exceed 220 lbs.

Riders Need a Bike

All riders must have an appropriate personal bike brought to camp and available for use in the iCan Bike program by no later than Thursday (Day #4).  Our goal is to transition all riders to their personal bike towards the latter part of the iCan Bike program such that they are comfortable with the bike they will be riding at home after day #5.

Also, to retain and sharpen their newly learned bike riding skill, it is very important that each rider spend at least 15 minutes bike riding each of the three days immediately following camp.  Research shows that for each of the three days immediately following camp that a rider does not ride at least 15 minutes, the chances of losing this valuable skill increases by approximately 10%.