For 29 years, Atiba Mbiwan has coached and mentored youth involved with the Bike Ride Across Georgia Dream Team.
It has been a labor of love. Mbiwan organizes and leads multiday and multiweek cycling trips for teens and adult mentors. He led the Dream Team’s five-week epic ride from Miami to Maine this summer.
The bicycle journey, Mbiwan says, is a metaphor for life – pace yourself, learn how to switch gears, don’t hurry.
“Intergenerational life is something we don’t have as much as we did in previous generations,” he said. “The opportunity to have these young people doing something with adults, that’s unusual. You don’t get to play baseball or football with adults.”
Credit: Phil Skinner
Credit: Phil Skinner
The cycling trip is “worthwhile physically, emotionally, spiritually – every way. You can’t replicate it,” he added.
The Dream Team began in 1994 for middle schoolers in Atlanta Public Schools. It allowed them to learn long-distance cycling and earn a new bike if they completed a seven-day BRAG bike ride.
Under Mbiwan’s leadership during the past three decades, the Dream Team has grown into a nonprofit organization serving middle and high school students from across the state.
BRAG Dream Team clubs are in Atlanta, Brunswick, Madison, Milledgeville and LaGrange, with new clubs starting up in Augusta and Americus, thanks to approximately 25 adult volunteers across Georgia.
Mbiwan’s bicycle journey started in childhood, growing up in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, a borough of New York City. When he was 10, he rode his bike to deliver newspapers in the mornings and afternoons.
One day, his supervisor asked all the neighborhood carriers if they wanted to bike from the southern to the northern part of Queens. At 14 miles round trip, it was the first time he had ridden so far from home.
“That experience really did plant the seed in me about bike riding outside the neighborhood,” he said.
After moving to Atlanta in 1992, Mbiwan learned about BRAG and wanted to go on one of the trips, but he said it took three years before he got up the courage and enough time off from work.
He went on his first BRAG trip in 1995 and was also a youth mentor. He watched the teens struggle to cycle on hilly terrain from Rome to Augusta because they were on the wrong type of bikes. He was determined to get them the proper equipment.
Thanks to grants and donations from businesses, Dream Team participants get bikes and jerseys, and the club has tents, sleeping bags, and everything needed for multiday long-distance cycling.
“That commitment I made early on has become my passion project,” Mbiwan said. “I saw what it did to those kids who were able to complete (the trip) with the proper training and equipment. Their confidence and social skills went up tremendously.”
Mbiwan’s volunteer work intertwines with his career, having worked as a schoolteacher and then in philanthropy at two family foundations with the mission of serving youth. He is executive director of the Zeist Foundation, which serves youth organizations. The 64-year-old has three adult children and 11 grandchildren.
HOW TO HELP
If you’re interested in volunteering or donating to the Brag Dream Team, go to bragdreamteam.org.
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