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Five days a week, 28-year-old Ebony Smith arrives at Changing Gears Bike Shop at10:50 a. m., ten minutes before opening. Walking into the shop, she turns on the lights, opens the register, and reviews the repair orders. For the next several hours she will repair bikes with professional skill and care, and guide customers through bike choices like an experienced rider, learning about their needs and preferences, and helping them to find the perfect fit.

Although Smith had almost no experience riding a bike and didn't even enjoy riding one when she first came to Changing Gears, she has stayed in the position for nearly a decade now, and her customers are thankful to her heartfelt assistance. What's more, many of the shop visitors are youth from families living in low-income housing named Alameda Point. Smith lived in this neighborhood throughout her childhood, and to these youngsters and families she is a positive role model-someone determined to succeed in spite of educational and financial struggles.

When she first began at Changing Gears at 19 years old, Smith was living with her parents, who struggled to make a living. She had failed to earn a high school diploma when she didn't pass California's high school exit exam. However, when a three-month job training position opened at the bike shop in 2008, Smith took a chance to, as she says, "turn her life around". She signed up and was quickly hired.

Smith is just one of the thousands of Changing Gears' employees around the world, and her continued success at Changing Gears embodies the shop's duty to "operate a bicycle-based social enterprise that meets the needs of the underprivileged of our local area".

In addition, the shop has a strong environmental focus, which includes bicycle reuse and recycling. Throughout the years Changing Gears has also engaged youth and families in bicycle field trips and provided free bicycle parking and repair service at local farmers' markets in order to encourage bike riding as a practical and green form of transportation.

Through its blending(协调) of effective small business practices with a social and environmental duty, Changing Gears stays inspired to use bicycles as a vehicle for social change.