Want to donate an old bicycle or sewing machine?

If you have an old bicycle - or a sewing machine - you'd like to donate to needy people in developing countries, Tim Weitzel will be glad to pick them up on Saturday in Coralville and North Liberty and ship them overseas for you.

Weitzel, 52, of Dubuque, has been volunteering for three years with Pedals for Progress. In that time, he's collected 1,370 bicycles for the New Jersey-based non-profit.

On Saturday, he'll pick up bicycles and sewing machines from 9 a.m. to noon at 106 Second Ave., Coralville (behind Frohwein Office Plus), and at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty.

Pedals for Power asks, too, that donors give $10 per bike, which covers about a third of the cost of shipping the bicycles and sewing machines overseas. The bicycle and $10 donations are tax-deductible, with receipts given at the collection site.

Weitzel, an avid biker, owns and runs Weitzel Financial Services, a financial planning and brokerage firm in Dubuque.

“Our daughter has traveled extensively in the Third World, as have my wife and I,” he said. “We've seen the poverty and the lack of cheap, reliable transportation, and we decided to combine my love of bikes and the needs of the Third World.”

The bicycles he's collected, he said, have gone to Uganda, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

More information about Pedals for Progress can be found at www.P4P.org