Since launching in April, Ride for Change has been picking up serious speed across Wānaka.

Led by Wao Aotearoa, the community-wide, three-month campaign is designed to encourage local tamariki to ride, walk, and scoot to school.

Its school workshops, after-school rides, and themed fun rides have helped Wānaka’s youngest cyclists clock more than 8,400km of active travel so far.

Students from Wānaka Primary and Holy Family Catholic School have clocked up these miles - which together are the equivalent of riding from Wānaka to Auckland and back three times.

Forty-seven books worth $2,000 have been donated to school libraries through Bike 4 Books, a Wao Aotearoa-designed challenge that turns every active trip into points for books.

Holy Family Catholic School associate principal Fergus McLean said students came back from a Love Your Bike bike maintenance session (part of Ride for Change, with Muireann Green pictured here) “full of new information and skills”.

Meanwhile five schools have engaged in Love Your Bike workshops, delivered with WORD’s Rob Barry and U19 NZ road champ Muireann Green: teaching tamariki the joy of fixing a flat, tuning a chain, and riding with confidence.

“The children all came back full of new information and skills which is going to be so helpful moving forward,” Holy Family Catholic School associate principal Fergus McLean said.

Wao Aoetora said it was “just getting started”, with more exciting activities being rolled out.

Every Tuesday this term, the Bike Bus has been travelling from Holy Family Catholic School to the Wānaka Recreation Centre.

This is “a supervised, set-route group ride that’s helping kids grow confidence on the road, make friends, and have fun on two wheels”, Wao Aoteraroa said.

Its ‘next stop’ is the Matariki Fun Ride, on Saturday June 21: a dress-up community ride which will start and end at the Dinosaur Park with a 9km route on local cycle ways in between.

Learn more about the Matariki Fun Ride, as well as all the other Ride for Change initiatives, here.

PHOTOS: Wao Aotearoa