A Mercer County organization is giving back to the community and raising money for charity.

“Give a bike, change a life” is the motto of the Trenton Bike Exchange. The organization refurbishes donated bicycles, sells them and then donates the revenue to a nearby nonprofit organization.

“We bring them into this section of the store where we sort them, triage them. Those that can be fixed are kept,” says Ira Saltiel, with the Trenton Bike Exchange.

The bikes that cannot be fixed are stripped of parts, which are used to fix the other bikes for sale.

Saltiel says that the staff working at the exchange, based in Ewing, are all volunteers. They are selling the bikes at prices that no one else can match – and have been doing so for over 11 years.

“Since we started we’ve sold 20,000 bikes and we have given $1.1 million,” Saltiel says.

Within the last year, the Trenton Bike Exchange sold $137,000 worth of bikes – the money going to the Boys and Girls Club of Mercer County for the children to use in a variety of programs.

“We get them laptops. We have a social emotional literacy program that costs money. That’s what they help us with,” says Boys and Girls Club COO Zoubir Yazid.

The popularity of biking during the pandemic has caused a shortage of bikes.

“We sell out by 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. when the adult bikes are gone,” says Saltiel.

But Saltiel says that the low prices of the bikes also help families in the community.

“It was a husband and wife and a child. The wife was blind. The only way she could ride would be to ride on a tandem bike with her husband,” Saltiel says.

The bike was sold for $600, when it would normally cost $2,000 in the store.

The Trenton Bike Exchange takes donations on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.