Jane Tooley is well-known among the cycling community. Her bright smile, her energetic personality and her all around nice attitude has won her many friends.
Friends of Jane also know that she is a person who likes to help out with causes, lots of them. This summer Jane went to Namibia in southern Africa to volunteer in a bicycle store with an organization called D.E.E.P., Disability Economic Empowerment Project. Here is how Jane explains it.
"The project was stared with a shipping container sent over from Canada full of bikes, tools and a work bench. basically, they emptied out the container and turned it into a successful bike store in just three years. The catch is that they didn't have the best tools to start out with and after three years of wrenching, the tools they do have are extremely worn down.
It is honestly a wonder how everyone continues to stay positive and fix bicycles. Where wrenches are concerned, all they have is a barely functioning 15 wrench, an 8 a 10 an 111 and a socket 9 and 15. One Phillips screw driver. The freewheel remover, chainbreaker pin, cone wrenches and allen keys are essentially useless. No pedal wrench, vice grips, cable cutters, truing stands or headset wrenches. I gave them my two spoke wrenches since they only had the multi-size kind. In short DEEP is in dire need of tools."
So Jane sent the above story to her friends in the bike community asking that donations be made so that a colleague of Jane's who is going to Africa, could take the tools with her.
[img_assist|nid=4015|title=donated tools|desc=the stash of tools|link=node|align=left|width=500|height=333]
The pile of donated tools going to Namibia. The drop off was the Bike Joint and over the last couple of days bags of tools started to show up at the shop. Jane had asked for a specific list of tools for her friends to give. In the end all the tools, plus some were collected by the cycling community. Jane's dad was incredulous at the generosity put out.
The tools were then packed up and sent to Africa where hopefully a lot of happy bike mechanics are using the donated tools and the Toronto bike community should be proud of once again coming to the call of one of their own.
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