A bicycle repair shop staffed entirely by women is up and running for the day and a Hong Kong mum named Min is getting her hands dirty. The 34-year-old, who declined to give her full name, is learning how to turn worn-out bikes into saleable products at the Sham Shui Po shop, which is part of a social enterprise aimed at helping out-of-work mums. Her training covers everything from removing rust to changing parts, but the complex technicalities of bicycle maintenance do not faze her. Kindergarten will immerse Hong Kong ethnic minority kids in Chinese language “I became interested after seeing other people fixing the bikes here. I think it’s quite fun,” said Min, who lost her full-time job during the Covid-19 pandemic. “My children love riding bicycles. I can repair their bikes after coming here.” The mother of an underprivileged family, she attends bicycle maintenance training three days a week at the repair shop at J Life Foundation Centre in Tai Nan Street after sending her kids for tutoring lessons on the second floor of the same building. She is one of the participants of an initiative called “Cycling Tomorrow”, the brainchild of Elli Fu Nga-nei who established the J Life Foundation in 2012 to tackle income inequality and food waste. Under the charity’s umbrella is J Life Mart, a social enterprise started in 2019 selling bicycles and restored parts, second-hand items and DIY products – all while empowering underprivileged women. The social enterprise is teaching bicycle maintenance to 30 mothers who have been struggling with unemployment, some of whom will go on to take up part-time posts at the shop which opened in March last year. Operation Santa Claus , the annual fundraiser jointly organised by the South China Morning Post and public broadcaster RTHK since 1988, will provide funding to pay for the wages of the trainee repair staff at J Life Mart. J Life Foundation is one of 18 beneficiaries of the fundraising drive , which has supported 320 charity projects and raised HK$333 million (US$42.7 million) since 1988. Fu said the charity came up with the idea after receiving unwanted bikes from children who were spending less time exercising during the pandemic. “One of my colleagues knows how to repair bikes. We started to fix them so our members can ride them,” she said. “As there are more second-hand bikes, we thought we could educate the women from our centre and sell the bikes through our social enterprise. Fu said the charity had been providing training to 30 mothers since January this year and some of them would be hired as part-time trainees in the repair shop after a year. “Before the pandemic, most of them worked in the catering and construction industries. As soon as the pandemic began, they lost their jobs and could not secure new ones for a few months,” she said. Hong Kong DJ ‘Uncle Ray’ donates HK$100,000 to Operation Santa Claus “So when they visited our centre, I immediately asked if they were interested in learning bicycle maintenance. They can utilise the free time as their kids are doing homework at our centre.” Fu has noticed some positive changes in the group of mothers since the training began. “They began to be hopeful about the future and repairing bikes can be quite therapeutic. They focused on the bikes instead of their difficulties in their lives,” she said. “When other mothers saw how happy they were, they also became interested in joining.” Since the start of the coronavirus crisis in Hong Kong early last year, the charity has sold more than 450 bicycles via its online store run by beneficiaries. Bikes for children are priced between HK$200 to 500, while adult bikes range from HK$400 to HK$800. Apart from repair techniques, she said it was crucial to train up the mums on the business side of operations, teaching them the professional skills required for running the online shop. “Our employees need to persuade the buyers to pay the deposit. If they are holding the bikes for a long time without deposits, we cannot sell the bicycles to other people. I’ll teach them negotiation skills,” she said. “They need to talk to the clients at 9pm to 10pm, which is the golden hour, and reply to messages within 30 minutes, if not they may lose the clients. They also need to know how to answer the detailed questions.” Fu hopes the project can become a self-sustaining social enterprise in the future. “We are actually providing hands-on learning experience as they really need to operate a real business, while making a living,” she added.