A Proper Wheelchair Is Life!

A Proper Wheelchair Is Life! The goal of this campaign is to provide life giving mobility to one person at a time. In a perfect world, everyone would have access to functional and affordable wheelchairs. But this is particularly not the case for people with disabilities in low resource countries (wheelchair users in wealthy countries are also subject to systemic problems).
 

While a proper wheelchair is life, an improper wheelchair is not. Many people in low resource countries are the recipients of poorly designed, barely functional, and inappropriate wheelchairs which are sent by well-intentioned foreign based nonprofits/charities by the thousands and distributed at mass drop off events. These improper wheelchairs are part of a systemic problem of providing inadequate equipment to people with disabilities in low resource countries in the name of "doing good". The unintended consequence is the normalization of a very low level of wheelchair based mobility and lack of functional independence for people with disabilities creating an ongoing Cycle of Stagnation due to low economic expectations.

The immediate goal of the A Proper Wheelchair Is Life! campaign is to work to break this Cycle of Stagnation one person at a time. As funds are raised we will provide the next person on our waiting list a wheelchair using our local partner organizations. We are sure that the receipt of a proper wheelchair will be life changing event for our recipient.

Our long term goal is to influence the flow of wheelchairs to low resource countries by constantly stressing the importance of providing functional wheelchairs as opposed to only focusing only on the quantity of wheelchairs provided rather than the resulting quality of life of the recipients.