Wheels4Life

I believe in a people….. I believe in human kind and I believe WE CAN as a team. Let’s BUY 100 wheelchairs in 728 days. This sounds like an insurmountable task…but we CAN if we pull together

How did this initiative come about :

As a team our belief in people and their willingness to help without boundaries is unmatchable. We have all had personal experiences to support this notion. The key driver however behind the Wheels4Life campaign is about giving back some freedom, mobility and control of one’s destiny to the less fortunate paraplegic by donating a suitable wheelchair.

As paraplegic, my wheelchair is my back-bone. I am disabled without it.

This is a Short story that inspired our team to do the extraordinary in order to give a helping hand.

One of the things I enjoy is take the occasional casual wheelchair cruise in any neighborhood preferably in new environments. I am happy to talk you through the reasons why the “casual cruise in new environments”…but I think you take a guess.

On this particular day I was in Phiri, Soweto. Barely 100metres into my casual cruise, I noticed coming out of a modest home two young men one pushing the other in a wheelbarrow. On first site, I thought they were also “just cruising” and having fun although their faces suggested otherwise. Out of curiosity I wheeled myself towards them, and that’s when I noticed that this was not a joy ride. The one young man being pushed was at least a Para, by just looking at his legs (I would know after 6 years in Wheelchair). It didn’t take longer for us to engage since we shared a similar challenge. He had been shot by a stray bullet when he was in Grade 11. He never made it back to school for a number of reasons including the fact the wheelchair he got after rehab was beyond repair. His forms of transport for the past 5 years had been either in wheelbarrow; on someone’s back or drag him himself from point A to point B.

For a moment I felt really guilty for owning three wheelchairs, while this young man full of energy and lot of potential was at the mercy of other people to get anything done…including going to the bathroom. This guilt did not last long for I knew I could do something now (give him one of my chairs) and secondly that I did not know any better until that day.

I then wondered how many other people…young and old are in his situation that we don’t know about. We had to do something even if we touch only a fraction of the number. We can do something to improve and change the lives of these folks.

Now that you are reading this note… you can play your part by:

• Helping us buys 100 wheelchairs in 728 days (2years)

• looking out for those that need assistance and raising the awareness through wheels4life or other appropriate channels
• link us with those that share the view that “Disability is not Inability”

Be part of Change