Making a difference for a decade
SEVENTY bikers have been making a positive difference in people’s lives for the past 10 years.
Around Christmas in 2007, a group of bikers gathered 500 underprivileged children together, with the idea of spoiling them with a day of entertainment, a meal and gifts. That group later formed the Revolution Motorcycle Club, which has since flourished.
The club, which is headed by seasoned community leader Clive Pillay, is made up of people from around Durban who ride bikes as a hobby. It is solely committed to helping people in underprivileged communities.
POST spoke to Pillay to find out the secret to the club’s success.
“Our 10-year journey has been awesome,” he said. “We have taken in members and their families and got them involved in our community campaigns. A big annual event is our Mandela Day celebration.”
Two years ago on Mandela Day, the club gathered just over 4 000 pensioners for breakfast and then lunch, put together some entertainment, and gave them a goodie bag put together by schoolchildren.
“A while back we adopted the ABH Children’s Home as our beneficiary for charity work, and often partner with Child Welfare, ABH and various community organisations to run different campaigns using bikes, making it more exciting,” said Pillay.
In addition, the club strives to highlight women’s and children’s rights, as well as their safety.
Members of the club, which also has female members, travel around South Africa to do charitable work. Last month they went to Namibia.
“Our bikers rode to Namibia and were able to see different places and participating in bike rallies. We want to develop riders and get more women involved in riding bikes. There is a lot of negativity around biking. We want to develop young riders, help them get their licences, teach them how to ride and show them the safety aspects,” Pillay said.
According to him, the greatest challenge faced by clubs today is striking a balance between all race groups.
“We are trying to get clubs to be non-racial. We found that clubs try to revolve around a particular race group. We encourage other race groups to adopt a similar approach to community work and biking. We usually don’t target people, they approach us. Our aim is to have a completely non-racial group with riders from various backgrounds,” Pillay added.
With a number of charity works under their belt, the Revolution Motorcycle Club continues to put smiles on the faces of the underprivileged.
They have also built a crèche in Chatsworth for underprivileged children.