Abercrombie & Kent aims to change lives in Zambia

Luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent kicked off its bike donation event with the charity Wheels of Change International to gather bicycles to donate to a village in Zambia.

Bikes are indispensable to villages in rural areas because a healthcare worker can visit four times more people an hour on a bike, a girl with a bike is 70 percent more likely to attend school and with a means of transportation students are far more likely to pursue school beyond the eighth grade. By running an annual campaign that focuses on traveling and philanthropy, Abercrombie & Kent will likely strike a chord with the brand’s typical affluent consumer.

Biking to a new future
Abercrombie & Kent staff members in the United States and their families brought bikes and sports equipment to the company’s headquarters in Downers Grove, IL to prepare them to be shipped.

Staff members will collect and pack a container to ship to staff members in Zambia who will supervise the distribution. The project is funded by Abercrombie & Kent Philanthropy.

Wheels of Change will then help convert the container into a bike shop and provide training on bicycle mechanics to create new jobs in the area.

Abercrombie & Kent Facebook post

The organization “works to empower the people of Africa through the use of donated bicycles.”

This event will change the lives and education patterns of families in Nakatindi Village in Zambia. The focus will likely resonate with wealthy clients since 40 percent of donations from ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the United States goes toward educational causes, according to a report by Wealth-X and Arton Capital.

The report notes that UHNW individuals are focusing on philanthropic initiatives that present long-term solutions to deep-seated problems, such as programs that promote entrepreneurial pursuits. Philanthropists also prefer to have measurement systems in place that can track and assess the cumulative efficacy of donations (see story).