When an entrepreneur learned that thousands of perfectly good bicycles were about to be thrown away, he stepped up and bought them all before donating them to poor students in Myanmar.

In June of last year, bike-sharing company oBike withdrew from the Singapore market and began their liquidation process. Businessman Mike Than Tun Win was devastated when he saw the mountains of discarded bicycles that were then left behind.

“It felt extremely sad for me to see all these bicycles piling up in junkyard, left around roads and parks unattended and rusting,” Win wrote in a blog post. “The manufacturing of these bicycles can cost anywhere from $300 to $500 per unit and a lot of natural resources are now left to waste and sent to blazing furnaces to be recycled (if we are lucky) or just simply left rusting somewhere else.”

Win immediately thought of the poverty-stricken kids he had seen walking miles to school during his many past trips to Myanmar, and that’s when he got a brilliant idea.

“It’s a common sight to see lines and lines of students walking long distances from home to school in rural villages,” Win said. “Some students can walk up to one hour from home to school and the families can hardly afford a simple form of transport like bicycle or motorcycle… a school bus is almost unheard of to the students in rural villages.”

Win then founded the LessWalk nonprofit, bought up all of oBike’s unused bicycles and donated them to schoolchildren. The project has been hit with many challenges along the way that cost him lots of money. First, he had to replace the ride-sharing electrical system with regular key locks, then he encountered tons of legislative red tape and fees when it came time to ship the bikes from Singapore to Myanmar.

Even with all the challenges, Win has no regrets, and he is proud to say that he has shopped shipped and received about 4,700 brand new bikes with 5,300 more already on the way.

“The initiative is better than expected as I was trying to buy used bikes from recycling graveyards but managed to get 100% new, undeployed bicycles at a very good price!” he explained.

“All bicycles are free for students living below the poverty line in Myanmar and need to walk 2 kilometers to school,” Win added.

While his nonprofit has gotten some donations and sponsorships, most of their $400,000 financing has come straight from Win’s pocket. Now, he is in talks with government groups and grassroots charities so that they can help LessWalk distribute the bikes in the next few weeks.

“I have been planning this since 1st March when I published [my idea] on Facebook and Linkedin,” writes Win. “Three months after my post, I am super glad that I can finally start working on it!”