Carey Margaret Foundation

General information

MCF uses prison time to help people redefine themselves: we create and run bicycle and wheelchair refurbishment workshops in prisons, training offenders to NVQ level 2 in bicycle maintenance. These workshops provide meaningful activity to 125 prisoners each week in 14 projects across 10 prisons*. Bikes and wheelchairs are donated by partner charities, or saved from landfill. Each workshop has a qualified, experienced instructor, and MCF arranges for prison workshops to have a steady flow of items to repair, and the equipment to do so. Trainees learn to work as a team, to take instruction and to mentor one another. Once each bike/ wheelchair has been expertly stripped and rebuilt, MCF collects and redistributes them to partner charities which help disadvantaged people: around 250 wheelchairs and 1,100 bikes were donated in 2014 alone. As of 2015, we partnered with InCommunities (Bradford) and Achieve North West (Manchester: Approved Premises) to create 'Bikerys', self-financed, community based workshops taking traineeship referrals from various projects working with disadvantaged people, mending and refurbishing bikes for the public.