Community Interviews: Cycling Community

Could you please provide some brief information about your community?

We are a groups of individuals, who are fond of cycling and who cycle for transportation and sports purposes. Some of our members actively join competitions.

Could you please tell us about your activities?

We do not have a lot of cycling people at our school; so what we do is that we contact bicycle rental shops to bring bicycles for rent to the school so that people can rent them, and by that way, we organize tours. However; in that case, we are required to make sure that the number of the bicycles so rented exceed a certain number, which makes it difficult for us to organize cycling tours as often as we would like to organize. On the other hand, we do organize tours, which include barbecue parties, or cycling workout tours, to which people with bicycles attend.

How many members actively take part in the community activities? From what departments are your members? Could you please tell us  about member profile of your community?

There are 10-15 active cyclists in the community. A majority of the community members are from the faculty of engineering.

What would you like to say to address your prospect members? Are there any prerequisites to join the community?

There are no prerequisites to join our community at all. In fact, even those, who cannot cycle, can come and join us, and we can teach them how to cycle. 

What are your goals for the community? What kind of activities do you intend to carry out?

Our primary goal is to popularize cycling, and to make sure that a larger number of people are engaged in this sport. As a rather higher target, we plan to organize a road bicycle race, open to public, which would be a first in Ankara. Even though it is only a plan at the moment, I am confident that we will make it happen.

How do the community activities affect your undergraduate education or career goals?

In fact, we organized a seminar event about that question, during which we hosted and heard Kevser Seri, who ended up making a career based on cycling and opened up a bicycle shop. Seri, who started with daily tours in distances not longer than 10-20km, subsequently toured entire Turkey on bicycle, and she eventually made a career based on cycling and opened up a bicycle shop.