LaSone Barber has been haunting the aisles at Bikes for the World for thirteen years now! She started with us when we were down on Eads in Pentagon City…and there truly were aisles (and aisles and aisles) of bikes in the warehouse. That’s the warehouse that could hold 7,000 bikes (now we can handle about 1,000 before we start tripping over them). So having LaSone organize a team from her corporate office at Microsoft was…well let’s just say we kept them busy and they gave us floor space.
Over the years we moved and so did she so we missed a few years of working together, but when we settled in Rockville and she returned to organizing corporate volunteer sessions for Microsoft we rekindled our relationship. Now with limited space, having the Microsoft team visit every other month or so has been critical. They come excited and ready to work and usually help us with a loading and compacting bikes simultaneously.
We met LaSone before our 100k celebration event and brainstormed to take advantage of that Microsoft technology. The day before our big event loading our 100,000th donated bike, we had a small gathering across the street at the Pentagon city Mall where Microsoft had a retail store. LaSone set us up to give a multi-media presentation, something that would have been challenging in our cavernous warehouse. We welcomed Luis Jimenez all the way from Costa Rica who shared stories and photos from MiBici and FINCA Costa Rica, the partner receiving the most annual shipments from BfW and more importantly in 2014 our 100,000th donated bike.
And LaSone and her team also rolled up their sleeves, walked across the street, and got their hands greasy in the warehouse. They helped us compact more bikes for the shipment and rolled bikes into the container bound for Costa Rica. They were instantly hooked, or at least LaSone was. She scheduled many more events over the years. And the bonus for us, the employees of Microsoft can apply to have their hours matched, in dollars. So for every hour worked by one of their employees at Bikes for the World, Microsoft pays US!
October is Microsoft’s big GIVE event where they focus on volunteerism during the month. This year they organized a team building bike build where they bought, assembled, and donated 10 brand new bikes. Dozens of employees took part in the event and LaSone jumped in to represent us. When we couldn’t spare anyone to attend the event to speak about what we do, LaSone said, I got this. So while we worked that busy Thursday afternoon at the warehouse, one of our longest serving volunteers stepped in and stepped up to energize the Microsoft team. Hopefully we’ll see a few of them again the next time LaSone sets up a time to come visit.