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Peter and Sara Craig have finally started working in Haiti after finding transportation there aboard a private jet.

The couple, along with their sons, Noah, 4, and Abram, almost 2, are moving to Haiti from Hillsboro, Ore., to begin work with Clean Water for Haiti, a humanitarian aid organization that works to provide clean, drinkable water for Haitian families. They arrived there Jan. 30.

The Craigs were winging their way across the United States en route to Haiti when the killer earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Jan 12. They were turned back at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and waited two frustrating weeks at Sara’s parents’ Longview home before finding a ride with The Wheelchair Foundation. The nonprofit organization, based in Danville, Calif., has delivered 600 wheelchairs to Haiti and plans to send more using the founder’s private jet.

The Craigs, who were the subject of a Jan. 19 story in The Daily News, have settled into their home about 40 miles north of Port-au-Prince. The area was not affected by the earthquake.

“Aid groups have been giving out camping tents, and people have pitched them in every open space in the city,” he wrote on Jan. 31 in the family’s blog, ourordinaryjourney.blogspot.com. “Look at the median the next time you are merging onto the freeway and imagine seeing hundreds of people camping there waiting for who knows what. From what we were exposed to, it wasn’t so much the intensity of the situation that was overwhelming. It was the number of people who have been affected.”

Craig ended the Jan. 31 entry saying how thankful he and Sara are for a safe house, electricity, clean water and ample food and how blessed they feel when most of the population is struggling.

“As we begin this new chapter in our lives, we are overwhelmed by how many things we have to be thankful for,” he wrote, “and this is only the beginning.”

SOURCE : tdn.com

KUALA TERENGGANU: Raising six school-going children is hard on any parent. But for roti canai seller Zulkifli Awang and his wife, Rotipah Chik, the task has been monumental. Two of their children have cerebral palsy.

Ahmad Fahmi, 8, and Zul Ashraf, 10, cannot walk. Both of them are carried by their mother to attend a special class daily at SK Padang Hiliran in Bukit Besar near here.

Rotary Club members presenting Zul Ashraf Zulkifli, 10 (left) and Ahmad Fahmi Zulkifli, 8, with their wheelchairs. With them is their mother, Rotipiah Chik (extreme right).

Now, thanks to the Kuala Terengganu Rotary Club which donated wheelchairs to the family yesterday, the two children can move around without having to depend on their mother so much.

Zulkifli, 44, said they had been saving up to purchase wheelchairs for the two boys but money had been tight, especially as a wheelchair cost more than RM1,000.

“It would have taken us some time to raise money to buy the wheelchairs. We are grateful for this gift from the Rotary Club,” he said after receiving the wheelchairs from club president Philip Lee at Mydin Mall yesterday.

Two other cerebral palsy children, Mohd Fazuddin Awang, 9, also from SK Padang Hiliran, and Mohd Luqman Nurhakim Muhammad, 10, from SK Kompleks Seberang Takir, were also presented with a wheelchair each.

Lee said two wheelchairs were presented to senior citizens Ong Siew Gaik, 65, and Mariaye Ellapan, 66.

One wheelchair was donated to the neurology unit at Sultanah Nur Zahirah Hospital and another to Kuala Terengganu Parkinson’s Disease Association.

“The wheelchairs are a gift from the Wheelchair Foundation of Rotary International in the United States,” he said.

SOURCE: New Straits Times

DANVILLE — Tim Miller didn’t think about going to Haiti. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, the thought just never crossed his mind, as there was no way the registered nurse from Fresno could get to the earthquake-stricken Caribbean island country more than 3,000 miles away.

Then a family member — an attorney for Danville’s Wheelchair Foundation — called. The nonprofit, which has sent more than 800,000 wheelchairs in almost 10 years to countries around the world, was sending a private airliner filled with medical workers and supplies to aid to the country devastated by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12.

The trip changed his life.

“I’ll go any chance I get,” said Miller, who has been on missionary trips to Mexico but nothing like the one he and a handful of others from Selma Community Hospital made last week.

Though he had spent a few years in an intensive care unit before taking his current job a year ago, Miller said he had never seen such suffering. “Every single family has been torn apart.”

The foundation made the trip last week, using the private MD-87 airplane of housing developer Ken Behring, the nonprofit’s founder, said Jeff Behring, a son who volunteered on the trip.

The plane, based in Stockton, made two trips between Wednesday and Saturday that week. The first was to Southern California and then Fort Lauderdale, Fla., before heading to Haiti — picking up people and supplies along the way. It then returned to Florida to get more people and supplies before returning back to Haiti.

Besides the delivery, Jeff Behring said, they also ferried medical workers who were looking for flights back. In total they brought 12,000 pounds of medical supplies and transported about 30 workers, he said.

Behring said a lot of the work was bringing antibiotics and other supplies for small problems that can turn big,

“Even the minor stuff can turn to amputation if you don’t take care of it,” he said. The supplies came from John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek and nonprofit MedShare in San Leandro, he said.

Behring said the effort was sparked after a music industry-related company, which was also looking at ways to support the organization, called asking about putting together some help. Besides big name acts like New Kids on the Block and Rage Against the Machine giving support, Scott Stapp, the lead singer of the band Creed, went with them to help, Behring said.

Behring said it’s unknown if there will be another plane trip, as the group wants to maximize its continuing help.

In addition to the help by plane, about 520 wheelchairs from the foundation will get there by boat in about six weeks. They are going first to hospitals, but will eventually go to patients. The group hopes to send another 1,500. He said the wheelchairs, which are new, cost about $150 each.

Miller, the nurse from Fresno, said seeing children suffer was the hardest. He worked in tent facilities, one for minor wounds and infections and another for more serious needs, like amputations. At the latter, he said there were two to four staff members for every 75 to 80 patients.

He said one father came in with a child suffering from a distended abdomen, a result of the breast-fed baby’s mother dying. An 8-year-old girl came in with a perforated appendicitis.

“If she hadn’t gotten there when she did she would have died,” he said. “It was touch and go, but in the morning she woke up and smiled.”

But then there are those he could not help, like a boy with a depressed skull fracture, who was paralyzed — he had received major injuries when his dad frantically tried digging his family from rubble.

“He probably wasn’t going to make it very long,” Miller said.

For more information go to www.planetohaiti.org or www.wheelchairfoundation.org

SOURCE: Contra Costa Times

Participants in Young adult Enrichment Support Services (YESS) Ask for Wheelchair Donations

News Release:
2/1/2010
From: Zeigler Habilitation Homes, Inc.
Contact: Geneva Chapman, Marketing Consultant
Number: 419-902-5807 (cell), 419-535-5603 (YESS House)
Fax#: 419-536-3835, Zeigler Administrative Office Say YESS to Helping Haiti’s DisabledReading about the plight of the Haitian people in The Toledo Blade during their daily morning “brews & news”© coffee and newspaper activity, the young adults in Zeigler Habilitation Home, Inc.’s YESS House were moved. They started getting concerned about disabled people in Haiti whose lives have been changed by the hurricane that devastated the nation’s capitol. What happened to their wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility equipment? And what about the newly disabled people who’ve had limbs amputated?These young adults who all have various types of developmental disabilities decided they needed to something. Thinking about the mobility equipment and other adaptive equipment that may have damaged or lost in the rubble left by the hurricane, the participants in the Young adult Enrichment Support Services (YESS) program decided they need to get wheelchairs donated to send to Haiti. First, they formed a committee and decided that calls would have to be made to companies providing mobility products. YESS, the only day program specifically designed for young adults with developmental disabilities in Northwest Ohio, provides a transition from youth to adult living through skill development training taught in a youthful recreation/enrichment environment utilizing games, fun habilitation activities, and community involvement to teach skills such as adult daily living, social interaction, problem solving, decision-making, organization, time management, focusing and staying on task, and communication, as well as vocational skills that are applied in actual employment answering telephones, cleaning and janitorial work, and doing other jobs at Zeigler.One of the components of the program is also community service and volunteerism. Therefore, it is only natural that the young adults want to help people in Haiti who, like them, have a disability. The young adults were so excited about helping Haiti’s disabled, they wanted to start right away. However, initial contacts were made by staff to find contact persons at several companies in the area and across the nation for the young adults to later make follow-up calls to and get commitments to assist in the campaign.“They’ll only ship palettes of items,” said owner of local company Patriot Products, Inc., Steve Grudziun who immediately returned the call when YESS staff left him a voice mail. Grudziun explained that in order for things to be shipped that far there would have to be a large enough number because it would be too costly to ship a few items at a time. After hearing about the desire of the young adults at the YESS House to send donated wheelchairs to Haiti, he offered to sell wheelchairs at a loss of profit for his business for only $100 each. The Wheelchair Foundation, an international organization that provide wheelchairs to impoverished people in poor nations, is sending wheelchairs to Haiti for $150, so Patriot Products, Inc. price is competitive. Instead of sending money outside our community, people in the Toledo area can help people in Haiti by purchasing a wheelchair right here in our area at a local business and save $50. On their website, the Wheelchair Foundation whose goal is to send 2000 wheelchairs to Haiti says they’ve already sent 560. But Grudziun says due to the lack of infrastructure those wheelchairs are probably not reaching the people yet and that it will take some time before that happens. In the meantime, it is important to start getting wheelchairs and other adaptive equipment ready to send to Haiti so that when roads are accessible they can be delivered. A valuable local resource, Grudziun offered needed expert advice on the YESS campaign and will, hopefully, continue to provide his assistance. Anyone who wishes to buy a wheelchair from Patriot Product, Inc., should make sure to tell the store representative that the wheelchair is being purchased as part of the “Say YESS to Helping Haiti’s Disabled” and call to the YESS House to let the young adults know the wheelchair has been purchased (see contact information below). Pick-up will be arranged. Also, donations of used wheelchairs will be accepted. Please call for more information.The owner of National Seating and Mobility, Inc., another local company, is checking his stock to see if he has any wheelchairs to donate to the effort. A third local company was contacted, but the contact person has not yet called back. A representative from Care Medical Products in Portland, Oregon, is also checking to see what they can do.“We had a local request, so we’re going to help them first,” she said. Calls were also made to Walgreens, which has an online grant application for non-profit organizations, which Zeigler Habilitation Homes, Inc. is, but due the lengthy grant process, this may not be viable. However, all possible avenues are being explored.One of those avenues is the Clinton Foundation, which has been contacted about shipping all wheelchairs donated in the YESS campaign to Haiti. If other individuals, groups, or organizations can help with shipping, their assistance is welcomed. Also, other advocacy organizations of the disabled are invited to assist Zeigler Habilitation Homes, Inc’s YESS program in this effort.Due to the number of wheelchairs needed in order to facilitate shipment, the young adults at the YESS House are inviting all organizations and entities serving the developmentally disabled and physically disabled to join them in their campaign. Anyone wishing to help get wheelchairs donated for Haiti’s disabled persons should use the following contact information to express interest in becoming part of a regional effort. Send all inquiries and requests to participate in the campaign or to notify that a wheelchair has been purchased at Patriot Products, Inc. to Geneva Chapman, gjcinc!@att.net or call (419) 902-5807(cell) or (419) 535-5603 (YESS House). A visit to the YESS House can be arranged by calling Michael Zeigler, Jr., YESS House Administrator, Louis Turley, Zeigler Day Hab Executive Director at (419) 536-3825 or Tanya Lee, YESS House Director at (419) 535-5603.

SOURCE: Toledo On The Move