Marilyn Price, 67, is Founding Director of Trips for Kids (TFK) – a national non-profit that takes underserved youth on daylong mountain bike rides. During these adventures, youth have fun while developing valuable life skills. Kids gain confidence, a greater appreciation for the environment, and a healthy dose of exercise. As the kids say, "I learned I am stronger than I thought" and "I learned if you keep trying you can get to the top."

TFK also offers after-school earn-a-bike/job training classes. While learning how to build and repair bikes, kids master skills in mechanics, patience, follow-through, and hard work. As they learn, youth earn points toward bikes, helmets, and parts of their own. Marilyn says that if you give a child a bike, one day it will get a flat. If you teach a child how to fix a flat, they can ride farther. But one day the brakes will wear out or the chain may break. If you teach a child how to build a bike, they will ride forever.

Marilyn started TFK in the San Francisco Bay Area with no money, equipment, resources, or road map to follow. Marilyn overcame the financial and organization obstacles with her characteristic enthusiasm, kindly persistence, and ability to network. She pulled together social service organizations, volunteers, bike industry sponsors, community advocates, celebrities, and the media. What began as a volunteer effort in her living room has grown into a national organization with an office and bicycle thrift shop, a warehouse for training workshops, and a fleet of vans that take bike classes to inner-city schools.

Marilyn’s Re-Cyclery Thrift Shop is the largest of its kind in the country and is a community center for affordable and environmentally sound transportation. This green business raises half of the organization’s operating budget, providing self-sufficiency, stability, and sustainability for TFK. Brilliant!

In 1999 and at the age of 59, Marilyn launched a national program to set up TFK chapters across the United States and Canada. Her willingness to help others has given many the courage and support to start chapters in their communities. There are now 63 financially independent chapters, each one modeled after her Bay Area work. Every year, TFK serves over 8.000 disadvantaged kids. While some of these youth live in the inner city, some live on reservations, and others are in treatment programs, they all share a common thread – they are low-income kids facing an army of challenges.

The growing national movement to Leave No Child Inside underscores the need for Marilyn’s innovative work; kids today are short on time outdoors. Evidence links this shortfall to lower confidence, creativity, and intelligence. Children are more depressed, distracted, and overweight because no one is taking them out to play. For youth living in poverty and the inner city, these problems are compounded. These kids are particularly vulnerable to high-risk activities such as drugs, gangs, and crime. Her simple approach to let kids explore the outdoors on bikes is working wonders.