Jim Bell launches Mechanics Beyond Borders and needs your help
Our Focus on Fixed columnist Jim Bell is spearheading a major new initiative called Mechanics Beyond Borders. We caught up with Jim and asked him what it was about, why he is doing it, and how Canadian dealers can participate.
Jim Bell didn’t much like teachers and they didn’t much like him growing up in east London, England. He admits to causing trouble in class so he’d get thrown out instead of failing out. In those days, no one knew much about learning disabilities like dyslexia, so he was left to struggle. “I couldn’t read and couldn’t write and couldn’t add up or subtract,” he said in a recent interview with Canadian auto dealer. “I was ashamed of it. I was very quiet about it. Now I don’t give a shit,” he said, adding that dyslexics are often the best presenters. “I can put on a seminar for six hours without a script.”
Although Jim’s career options without a formal education seemed limited, his life was forever changed at 15 years of age when a dealer principal in Sussex reached out and gave him a chance as an apprentice mechanic in his shop. “He seemed to take a liking to me,” says Bell. Making only $5 a week and riding his bike seven miles to work each day, the young Jim Bell got his start in the business.
Jim had a real aptitude as a mechanic and quickly rose through the ranks to have a varied and rewarding career in the UK, Africa, and lastly in Canada where he settled about 30 years ago. (Well, as settled as Jim can get with his incredible restless energy.) “I excelled at that stuff and was good with my hands. I excelled at diagnostics.”
The dealer who helped him get started never lost interest in Jim’s progress. “That guy followed my career right up to the time he died. He followed my career to South Africa and Canada.” Bell went back to the UK to see the dealer just before he died, and even though he’d had a stroke, and was paralyzed down one side of his body; “He still remembered me,” says Bell.
Bell has never forgotten that one man’s faith in him helped him turn his life around. Now it’s time for him to give back. “Why wouldn’t you give back?” says Bell. “The biggest source of misery in the world is people just looking after themselves. I get more enjoyment from this than anything I’ve done in my life.”
Create independence not dependency
Bell is spearheading a new initiative called Mechanics Beyond Borders that is designed to help young men and women in the developing world get the kind of helping hand he received as a young man. Bell recently returned from a trip to Uganda in Africa and recognized there is a major need for vocational training to help people develop skills for themselves and their communities, to be able to provide for their families. “Once you have been to Africa you never get it out of your system. Once you’ve been there you are just hooked,” he says. “It’s the heart of the people.”
Since his return, Bell has been visiting dealers and meeting with industry officials about his idea. So far, he’s had nothing but encouragement, some offers of financial support, and dealers willing to provide surplus equipment and tools to help get things started. But more is needed and Bell is on a mission.
His goal now is to create a sustainable organization that helps people help themselves. Rather than just dump money into a community, Bell says his vision is to teach the people to be self sufficient and develop lasting skills. “They are going to get skills and start feeding their families,” he said. “This is like dropping a stone in the lake. The ripples just spread out.”
The training will also include entrepreneurial skills to help people start their own businesses, and there will be training for men and women.
Jim is on a major recruitment drive to get Canadian dealers and their staff to help him prove that Canadians care. “This is new for me,” says Bell. “I have made my own money since I was 10 years old. This is the first time I’ve ever gone out and asked anyone else for money. I hate it.”
But he perseveres because the driving force behind his mission is the kids. “Give them a chance. Let them get off the ground,” he says. “It helps to break poverty. Education helps, but that’s only part of it. You need vocational training. Look at me, I don’t have the education but I managed to break poverty because I have a skill.”
If you have time, money, surplus goods, staff that can visit developing world training centers, or ideas to share with Jim, please contact him at: fixedbygac@cogeco.ca
