Richmond Cycling Corps’ Craig Dodson featured as a CNN Hero

The focus of  Church Hill based Richmond Cycling Corps is to get kids, all considered at-risk, into competitive cycling. It’s not as simple as providing bikes and a little coaching. The kids in this program have challenges that many of us can’t even imagine. Their motto of “Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop” resonates through everything the program does and teaches.

Craig Dodson and his crew work tirelessly to provide an opportunity for students that most of Richmond don’t know about or actively ignore. If you want to get an idea of what they do on a daily basis, follow Richmond Cycling Corps on Facebook. This is but one example of what they do.

What does RCC’s ‘Tough Love’ look like? It looks like Matt Kuhn driving (while still dark out) into Creighton Court, waking you up at 630am, taking you running, then having you move loads of dirt at the Armstrong Bike Park “Rocky” style, before school– because you were (again) running the halls of Armstrong High yesterday. If the traditional educational environment isn’t ‘your thing,’ then we’ll make sure that a traditional work-ethic and accountability is ‘your thing.’ We will not give up on the hardest working kid RCC has ever had in seven years (who also got his best race result to date on Sunday!).

The CNN Heroes program has taken note of Craig’s work and earlier this summer he was selected as a CNN Hero or in their words. “extraordinary people doing extraordinary things to change the world.”

Craig has been selected as one of the ten finalists. Each of these heroes will receive a $10,000 cash prize. One of the 10 will be named “CNN Hero of the Year” and receive an additional $100,000 for his or her cause. The winner will announced December 11th as part of a  “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute” which will be broadcast on CNN.

Craig Dodson from his CNN Heroes story:

“We’re luring them in with a bike — but (it’s) not about giving kids positive life experiences through bikes,” said Dodson, who started the program in 2010. “Our job is to get them out of public housing.”

Dodson and two other Richmond Cycling Corps employees do everything they can to make sure their students have no excuses to fail.

Image Credit: CNN

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