July’s Awesome Ottawa award goes to Clayton Dignard to support a bike fair in the Bayshore community — a low-income, mostly-newcomer neighbourhood in Ottawa’s west end.

In addition to free bike repairs, distribution of lights and reflectors, workshops on cycling safety, and information from community groups, the bike fair will feature pizza made in an outdoor community oven — with local youth engaged as oven operators in training.

Clayton has been organizing bike fairs in low-income neighbourhoods for the last three years. “I have witnessed,” he says, “how strong and immediate an impact a free bike repair has on a child’s mental and physical health. This is why my volunteers and I continue to do this.”

Clayton is a youth worker and community organizer based at the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre.