We already know the healthful benefits of riding a bicycle. A great source of low-impact aerobic exercise, biking can help elevate your mood, delay aging, improve your heart’s health, and burn calories. It’s also an eco-friendly form of transportation that’s easy on your body while still giving you a chance to build stamina, reduce your blood pressure and even hang out with friends. Those are some pretty decent reasons to take up biking if you don’t bike already.

But you can also help humanity by biking. Plenty of celebrities, from Lance Armstrong to Matthew McConaughey, have all biked for charity. Now you can, too!

On October 3 and 4, ACCION International is holding Microbike 2009, a charity event where communities across the globe will join together to help “pedal against poverty.” ACCION will be hosting “micro-rides” in these communities to raise awareness and gather resources to help fund micro financing, which is currently a leading solution to poverty.

ACCION, a global nonprofit microfinance organization, wants YOU to join in and form your own team! It’s really easy to do. You just sign up here and be a team captain and start your own team, or you can join a team that’s already been created. You’ll need to pay $50 to register.

Once you register, you will get a t-shirt, and after you turn in the funds you raise you will be eligible for prizes.  After you have a team together (or you’ve joined one), you can determine the bike route you will take in your local community and how long you will bike for. You can set fundraising goals with a toolkit that ACCION will send you after you register.

Then, you can send family and friends notices about your fundraising goals, what microfinance is, and how they can help support you. You can also share photos, stories and videos of your event through social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) as well as through the ACCION community and help raise even more awareness—and hopefully more interest and funds as well.

Finally, you can also take ACCION’s International Day to Eradicate Poverty Petition around with you and get it signed by as many people as you can. This will help you spread the word about poverty as well as your participation in Microbike 2009 as you take it with you to local businesses, events and friends’ houses. Maybe you could even get signatures and sponsors at the same time!