"Lawn Chair On Wheels" Helps The World's Poorest

"Lawn Chair On Wheels" Helps The World's Poorest MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Handicapped Equipment 29-5-23 You won't find a worthier cause to donate money to than the Free Wheelchair Mission which we first read about in a recent Reader's Digest article. During a trip to Morocco, Don Schoendorfer and his wife saw a disabled woman dragging herself across a road. After looking into it, they learned that in the poorest countries of the world, disabled people are lower on the food chain than beggars. "The sight of people crawling just really stuck with him," says Johnathan Abramson, marketing coordinator for the Free Wheelchair Mission. "With his talent for building things, he figured he could do something to help." In 1999, Shoendorfer created his first wheelchairs in his garage made from cheap plastic lawn chairs. He added inexpensive 24-in. mountain bike wheels with hand rims and 8-in. castor wheels for the front. A steel brace fits around the lawn chair and there's a simple footrest on front. Now, the wheelchair parts are made in China. It costs $34 to manufacture. With shipping the total comes to $41.17 per chair. So far, the mission has delivered more than 77,000 free wheelchairs and has a goal to deliver 20 million by 2010. Yet, with more than 100 million disabled poor in developing countries, the mission will still have a lot of work left to do. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, (Donations Only) The Free Wheelchair Mission, P.O. Box 513538, Los Angeles, Calif. 90051 or The Free Wheelchair Mission, 3100 Airway Avenue, Suite 115, Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626 (ph 800 733-0858 or 714 708-2100; fax 714 708-2500; involve@freewheelchair mission.org; www.freewheelchairmission .org).

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