Sustainability Spotlight: Provide a Ride
At Austin Creative Reuse, we're about more than just arts and crafts. We promote like-minded organizations to reduce overlap, increase awareness of city resources, and make it as easy as possible for our community to reduce, reuse, and recycle!
This month, we are highlighting the incredible organization, Provide a Ride, who partners with us and several other organizations in the Austin area. Continue reading below to learn more about them from Meredith McMahan, the founder who started this amazing effort during her sophomore year at Westlake High School!
What is the history of your organization? How did it get started?
I founded Provide a Ride in late 2022 during my sophomore year at Westlake High School...right after I got my driver’s license. Over the last several years, I had watched my older brother and a group of volunteers complete countless deliveries for charities around town. Through that experience, I learned that there was a huge need for a volunteer organization that could provide all types of cost-free transportation services to local charities using volunteers’ cars, SUVs, and trucks. With this, I decided to start Provide a Ride!
What is the mission of your organization?
Our mission is to give back to the community by providing all types of cost-free transportation services to our charitable partners in order to help lighten the burden of day-to-day operations and provide meaningful services to those in need. Our services might include picking up and delivering weekly food donations or retail purchases, or perhaps giving a ride to a doctor’s appointment or job interview for an individual that a charity serves.
What eco-friendly initiatives does your organization uphold?
Thus far, our only eco-friendly initiative has been to support Austin Creative ReUse and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore by beginning weekly pickups of donations from Austin Creative ReUse and delivering them to ReStore.
How do you hope to make an impact on the Austin community or world at large? How can ACR and our community help with your project?
Today we are providing our services to Austin Pets Alive!, Austin Pug Rescue, Community First! Village, Magdalene House, Nicole’s Place, Austin Creative ReUse, and Restore. As we grow our volunteer base, we will be looking to grow our charitable partners, so please refer us to any other Austin area charities that you think might need our services!
Where can we find out more about your organization?
Our website is at www.goprovidearide.org
My contact info is:
Meredith McMahan
meredith@goprovidearide.org
512-783-5893
