Freudenberg-NOK and Highland Mountain Bike Park collaborate for Southwick School

NORTHFIELD — Freudenberg-NOK and Highland Mountain Bike Park collaborated on a "Bike Build" event on Dec. 7, in an effort to build relationships with the community.

Freudenberg-NOK's Northfield Culture Team and Cari Bernash of Highland Mountain met several times to combine their annual holiday celebrations in a way that would connect with the local community. After a meeting with Principal Eric Keck of Southwick Elementary School, they decided to build bikes for Southwick students.

The overall need within the community is so great that it would be difficult to choose a specific child for each bike, so instead, the bikes will be donated to Southwick, where the students will have an opportunity to use them in school-directed activities. The goal is to give the school the resources its needs to get the children more involved in activities that they may not otherwise be able to do.

To make things a bit more challenging for the Freudenberg Northfield team, the event became a "Survivor"-style competition with four teams completing challenges to gain access to the bike parts. Once all the challenges were completed, and parts were collected, the teams worked with a Highland Mountain bike mechanic to assemble the final products. In all, Freudenberg and Highland were able to donate eight mountain bikes to Southwick School.

None of the Freudenberg associates knew in advance about the competition or that the bikes were being built for Southwick School. Dr. Keck joined the group for the revelation at the end of the competition at Highland.

The presentation of the bikes to the students occurred on Dec. 12, with representatives from Freudenberg and Highland bringing the bikes to the school to reveal the surprise during a student assembly.

"The entry point for so many of our students has been limited because many of our students don't have access to a working a bike," Keck said. "Today that barrier has been broken, through the generous and thoughtful gift that Freudenberg established for our students. They will now not only have access to a bike, but they are providing our school with the opportunity to start a whole new generation of mountain bikers. The impact they just made on our community is groundbreaking."

“A key tenet in our mission statement is to develop partnerships. With this event we wanted to focus on partnerships within our community. We couldn’t ask for better partners than Highland Mountain Bike Park and Southwick School,” said Freudenberg-NOK Plant Manager Del Woodward. 

“Highland was proud to partner with Freudenberg for the bike-building event," said Cari Bernash of Highland Mountain Bike Park. "We strive to make mountain biking more accessible to everyone in the community. By partnering with Freudenberg to donate these bikes, we are excited to provide positive experiences for the Southwick School students for years to come.”