Goodman Center, Madison BCycle partner to give teens hands-on internship experience

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - While some students spend summer break relaxing by the pool or hanging out with friends, three teens in Madison were hard at work learning the ins and outs of the electric bike business.

The Goodman Center teamed up with Madison BCycle to provide three of its high schoolers with hands-on internship opportunities through the center’s TEENworks program. Madison BCycle is an electric bike share business.

Alex Bloom, lead mechanic at Madison BCycle, said the interns learned skills like bike repairs, and accompanied staff in the field to check out the bike stations throughout the city.

“They’ve all been extremely eager and willing to learn, we’ve got them doing even some of the more complex bike repairs, and they can spit out some of the repairs just as quickly as I can now,” Bloom said.

Bloom said having the extra sets of hands from the interns has been a help.

“All of them have incredibly good attitudes and just want to chip in and are really interested to learn,” he said. “They’ve been a tremendous help both out in the field, moving the bikes around, replacing batteries, and in the shop here doing bike repairs, fixing important issues.”

Rising junior Arlo Waisman is one of the interns. He can’t drive yet, so biking is how he gets himself around, and said it’s important to be able to take care of your bike. He said he wants to continue working with bikes in the future.

“It’s pretty fun, it makes me feel like I’m part of the group here,” Waisman said of the internship. “I’ve learned a lot, met some cool people, worked on interesting bikes.”

The eight week long internships wrapped up on Aug. 20. The Goodman Center also partnered with DreamBikes. To learn more about the Goodman Center’s TEENworks program, click here.