National bike ride to include overnight stay in Houston

Utah State University Professor Mike Glauser will bike into Houston on July 5 and spend the night, resting a bit after biking more than 2,000 miles in 32 days. It’s part of a cross-country journey he hopes will be nothing short of the first step toward ending world poverty.

He left Florence, Ore., June 3, dipping his tires in the Pacific Ocean. Biking across the country following the TransAmerica Trail, Glauser will reach Yorktown, Va., on July 20. This cross-country journey, “ Pedaling to End Poverty ,” is an effort toward ending world poverty. Accompanying the 70-year-old Glauser are his wife, four of his colleagues and including a documentary film crew.

Glauser is a man on a mission, bicycling coast-to-coast with stops at dozens of small towns and hamlets in between, a crusade that’s sure to draw attention all along his route, and one everyone can easily be a part of.

His message is simple yet profound: “We have it in our grasp to dramatically improve the lives of poor people around the globe. Taking a grassroots approach, one small business at a time, with the model repeated thousands of times over.” It’s the same philosophy guiding Glauser’s ride across America. We truly are all in this together, one person reaching out to another, he said.

Glauser is the executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, Glauser’s students have now taught more than 10,000 people in Ghana, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Peru and more how to start and grow successful businesses, transforming their lives, the lives of their families, employees and those in their communities.

The innovative and nationally acclaimed program is called SEED, for Small Enterprise Education and Development. Students from any university can apply for the one semester international program, learning invaluable experience in being an entrepreneur and teaching and mentoring others. For students who have done the program one of two things has happened: They either graduated and started their own businesses, or they were highly sought after by companies wanting employees with this kind of worldly experience.

But now the program has the means to expand, touching more people’s lives. Glauser’s cross-country ride is to spread the word and raise money for scholarships. All money raised goes to student scholarships. Pledging as little as one cent per mile is a donation of $40 and will help students and budding entrepreneurs, he said.

Along his journey, Glauser is meeting up with alumni from the program, filming interviews on how their lives have been affected and the people they have touched.

MORE INFORMATION

Persons can contribute at: https://huntsman.usu.edu/seed/pedaling

Watch the video at https://bit.ly/3zipYsU

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