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Penn senior biking across the US to raise awareness Geneva Gondak is embarking on a 75-day journey ZACH JACOBS Contributing Reporter
While many graduating seniors will be spending the summer at a new job or vacationing, current College senior Geneva Gondak is planning something diďŹerent: a bike trip across the country to raise awareness and money for aďŹordable housing. Gondak is starting the 75-daylong trip just two weeks after graduation with the Philadelphia nonprofit Bike & Build, which organizes five annual cycling trips for 18 to 29-year-olds to help address Americaâs aďŹordable housing issues. Three of the annual trips, including the one Gondak is taking part in, take riders across the country, while the other two are regionally focused. âA few months ago, I was considering road tripping across the country,â she said. âBut then I realized that biking across the country â I thought that was 80 times as cool.â Gondak will be biking an average of 70 miles per day over the trip from Richmond, Va. to Seaside, Ore., stopping every three to five days to help build aďŹordable housing in locations such as Charlottesville, Va., Carbondale, Ill., and Portland, Ore. with organizations like Habitat for Humanity. In addition to these housing projects, riders will be seeing some of the countryâs most iconic landmarks. âIâm really excited that my route goes through Yellowstone National Park and part of Grand Teton,â Gondak said. âAs someone who is currently at a national outdoor recreation conference, Iâm really excited about seeing the national parks.â Each rider has to raise $5,000 before the trip for a grant project Bike & Build does with its riders.
PHOTO FROM GENEVA GONDAK
Geneva Gondak, a College senior, is working as part of the Philadelphia nonprofit âBike & Buildâ to raise awareness for affordable housing.
Gondak is currently in the process of doing that. âAďŹordable housing nonprofits across the country can apply for grants and our teams actually gets to sit down and choose where their grant money is going,â Bike & Buildâs Outreach Director Lily Goldberg said. Gondak, who grew up in the Bay Area of California, said she has been biking her entire life, but has also witnessed, firsthand, many of the problems that could be addressed by aďŹordable housing initiatives like Bike & Build. âRight now, aďŹordable housing is a huge issue in the Bay Area,â she said. âPeople are really getting priced out and canât aďŹord to live in homes theyâve lived in for years.â Gondak also pointed out that the lack of aďŹordable housing in some areas makes daily commutes to work for many Bay Area residents longer. This, in turn, causes more hours spent in a car, and more emissions per person.
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MAY 11, 2018 - GRADUATION ISSUE
The trip appealed to Gondak, she said, not only as someone who has spent her life biking recreationally and as someone interested in aďŹordable housing, but also because of these environmental considerations. According to Goldberg, many of Bike & Buildâs applicants come from backgrounds where they donât need to be actively aware of aďŹordable housing issues, and that the program, in part, aims to educate its participants and those they come into contact with across the country about housing. âA lot of people come into Bike & Build doing it for the adventure and for the cycling aspect of it, and they leave having a really good understanding of what the crisis is across the country, and as advocates for aďŹordable housing,â she said. âStopping in towns, talking to people about what weâre doing â itâs a very intimate way of getting the message out.â
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