Applications for Spring 2025 Bike Walk RVA Academy Now Open
Bike Walk RVA launched its first Academy in 2014 when the region had just 37 miles of bikeways and no plans focusing on bicyclist and pedestrian movement. After graduating more than 200 “Champions” trained to stand up for connected biking and walking, the region has quadrupled its bikeway mileage, built key connectors like the T. Tyler Potterfield bicyclist/pedestrian-only bridge, passed plans like the Richmond Bicycle Master Plan, Chesterfield Bikeways & Trails Plan, and Hanover Active Living & Healthy Neighborhoods Plan to layout strategies for increasing active transportation, and allocated $104 million to the regional Fall Line trail in the Central Virginia Transportation Authority’s first distribution of regional funds. Our network of Champions helped make those wins happen – are you the next one to help take the region even further?!
As a Champion, you will be get hands-on training, skill-sharing, and team-building to best advocate for funding, plans, and policies for significant development of bikeways, multi-use trails, and sidewalks in our region. Learn what it takes to have active transportation infrastructure built and how to advocate for it. Win funding in the budget, planning efforts, and safer streets for folks biking and walking. And you know what? Have a little fun, too.
For our eleventh edition of the Academy, we will be returning to in-person sessions (schedule below). More information about the format and curriculum of the Bike Walk RVA Academy can be found here.
Application schedule:
- DATE NEEDED: Applications open (Use form below to apply. Acceptance is competitive.)
- January 22: Applications due by midnight
- January 29: Applicants notified by close of business
Weekday schedule (Wednesdays):
- February 19: First session (6 to 8 PM)
- February 26: Second session (6 to 8 PM)
- March 5: Third session (6 to 8 PM)
- **March 10: Fourth session (6 to 8 PM) **Class held on Monday for this week only.
- March 19: Fifth session (6 to 8 PM)
- March 26: Sixth and Final session + graduation (6 to 9pm)
Applications are used to gauge level of interest only. Grammatical or spelling errors will not be weighed in the selection process.
Apply below.
Sports Backers is committed to creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture within Sports Backers programs and events in order to better inspire active living in the Richmond region.
This application period for the 2024 Academy has closed.