JewelRide, Edwardsville Library team up for Books for Bikes Challenge
Reading and fitness are two priorities for children in the community, and JewelRide and the Edwardsville Public Library are offering a chance to combine them.
The third annual JewelRide Books for Bikes Spring Reading Challenge started March 1 at Edwardsville Public Library and continues through April 15. The challenge offers new bikes as prizes for kids after they read and log in their books during spring.
The inaugural JewelRide Books for Bikes was in 2022 and was held as a summer reading challenge. The program was not held in 2023 but returned in 2024 as a spring challenge.
The primary sponsor of the program is JewelRide, an Edwardsville-based company that provides much-needed health-care transportation services for area residents.
“At JewelRide, we assist people with rides to their medical appointments, which is something that people take for granted but is a huge problem locally and nationally. More than 5 million people a year in the United States don’t make it to their medical appointments because of lack of reliable transportation,” said Tapiwa Mupereki, co-founder and CEO of JewelRide.
“Beyond being a business, we are invested in our communities and that’s why we support the Books for Bikes Spring Reading Challenge. Our idea is to encourage a culture of reading. The transformative power of education is well documented. It starts with a desire and an interest in reading. We are privileged to be in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities which have revolutionized our ability to learn. Readers will continue to have leverage in the cognitive age that we are in. At the same time, we want to encourage healthy living through awarding bikes as a prize for the challenge.”
Mupereki also sees the Books for Bikes Spring Reading Challenge as an opportunity to partner with local businesses to support the community. This year, four other businesses — The Cyclery & Fitness Center, Thompson Flaherty and YCG Accounting, BJ’s Printables and Dr. Hyten Dental — are also providing bikes for the challenge.
In all, 10 bikes will be awarded as part of the challenge, with a drawing set for 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 26 at Edwardsville Public Library. All the bikes will come from The Cyclery.
“We try to coalesce for the common good with all these businesses, and these are very high-quality bikes,” Mupereki said.
Megan Prueter, meanwhile, is head of youth services for Edwardsville Public Library and is one of the primary organizers of the JewelRide Books for Bikes Spring Reading Challenge.
“Last year we had 146 readers from kindergarten through grade eight with 2,639 books read,” Prueter said. “The kids can participate online through the library’s Beanstack app or with a paper reading log that’s available at the library.
“For each book that they read, they’ll receive an entry into a raffle for a free bike and they can earn up to 20 entries.”
For Mupereki, the Books for Bikes program is also a tribute to his mother. He grew up in a rural village in Zimbabwe, a small country in southern Africa. He credits his mother for instilling his love for reading and setting him on the path to a medical career.
“There weren’t a lot of opportunities in that village and the only way to get out of it to have a better life was to have access to school and education,” Mupereki said. “The only way to take advantage of that was to have an interest in reading, and the message is that reading can change your life.
“It was the same thing for my wife (JewelRide co-founder and chief medical advisor Dr. Faith Nkomo). She grew up in a small farming community in Zimbabwe, but because of reading, she was able to go all the way to medical school eclipsing several bottlenecks along the way. Now she’s a pediatrician and she played a key role in designing this program and promoting healthy lifestyles.”
For more information, visit https://www.edwardsvillelibrary.org/jewelride-books-for-bikes-reading-challenge, 618-692-7556 or go to Edwardsville Public Library on Facebook.
“The library is grateful to JewelRide and all of the businesses sponsoring Books for Bikes,” Prueter said. “It encourages and celebrates reading throughout the community and the bikes are such a great incentive.
“We would love to have more readers and more books read this spring. We’d like to get up to 3,000 books read, but we’re also just happy to have kids interested in the program and interested in reading.”
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“JewelRide, Edwardsville Library team up for Books for Bikes Challenge” The Edwardsville Intelligencer,
https://www.theintelligencer.com/news/article/jewelride-edwardsville-il-library-books-for-bikes-20211749.php March 13th, 2025.
