Circling Hunger: A Bicycle Flash Mob in Indianapolis

My friend Dave Miner and I were chatting on the phone the other day about creative ways to engage youth and raise awareness about hunger. Dave mentioned a bicycle flash mob in his home town of Indianapolis back in September of 2014. A bicycle flash mob? That was a unique way to enlist people who enjoy cycling to come together to collect food and bring attention that year to hunger on Indy Do Day,  a people-powered community day of service when the residents of Indianapolis take ownership of their neighborhoods and take care of their neighbors. 

The flash mob campaign was entitled Circling Hunger because the cyclists came together at Monument Circle, arriving from all directions. According to Dave, the event took place at Noon (allowing people to take off from work to participate).

A flash mob of more than 100 bike riders from 35 different Indianapolis companies came together today on Monument Circle to drop off nonperishable items for the Midwest Food Bank. The Orr Fellowship, Indy Hunger Network, Indy Do Day and the Elanco Enough Campaign rallied together to raise awareness that one in six Hoosiers are hungry and more than 80,000 children in the Indianapolis metro area suffer from hunger," said an Indy Do Day write-up.

For maximum effect, the cyclists were the same t-shirts and rode bikes from a local company that rents out cycles to commuters. Those commuter cycles are all the same color: yellow.  

The group hopes to illustrate how we can all come together to make a difference and promote Indy Do Day using hashtags #circlinghunger and #indydoday. The Indy Hunger Network has registered 25 projects on the Indy Do Day website," said the write-up

Here is a one-minute promotional video. (Note: The video strung together several topics in one URL, so please feel free to stop it after one minute).