Spare Change, Changing Lives

With the holidays upon us and children’s Christmas lists filled with the likes of the iPod shuffle, Game Boy Micro, and Xbox 360, there are three children from Pleasanton, CA with an attitude of gratitude and chose to give rather than receive.  For the past year and a half the children have been putting their spare change in a large bucket every time they go to visit grandma.  On Tuesday, November 22nd the Wheelchair Foundation was honored to be visited by Ryan Snyder, 10 year old student at Walnut Grove Elementary, Rachel and Emilie Kapp, 11 and 12 year old students at Harvest Park Middle School, and their proud grandmother and father.  They also brought with them a Safeway shopping bag filled with change they have been saving.  Inside the bag was $225 in small bills and change which they generously gave to sponsor three wheelchairs to children less fortunate than them throughout the world. 

Ryan, Rachel, and Emilie began to understand a little bit about how blessed they are to be mobile and to walk freely after they toured the Wheelchair Foundation Gallery at the Blackhawk Plaza.  Their eyes were opened to a whole new world as they looked at photos of children from developing countries that were crawling on the ground to go to school and church.  Teenagers with only one leg because while out playing with friends they accidentally stepped on a landmine and lost a limb.  And adults that were born physically disabled and have never gone outside their homes. 

The Wheelchair Foundation would like to thank the Snyder’s and the Kapp’s for their support of the Foundation.  The Wheelchair Foundation has currently distributed over 400,000 wheelchairs in more than 140 countries. 

*The Foundation is confident that Ryan, Rachel, and Emilie will get many of the items on their Christmas list this year because they truly have been “nice”, not “naughty”.*