This article appeared in the June Issue of the Danville Weekly
Ken Behring always knew he was going places. Raised in poverty during the Great Depression, he started earning money at the age of 6 by catching nightcrawlers and selling them for a nickel a can.
But a bicycle was the real catalyst of his life as a small businessman. Behring got a paper route and began to teach himself the entrepreneurship lessons that would serve him throughout his life.
“That bicycle gave me freedom and mobility for the first time,” he writes in his autobiography, “Road to Purpose.”
It’s little wonder that decades later, the multimillionaire Blackhawk developer would find
his life’s purpose in helping others go places they had never dreamed they could go. Behring’s establishment of the foundation that has provided almost half a million needy people with mobility through donations of wheelchairs happened either by accident, coincidence or divine intervention, depending on one’s view of how the world works.
In the late ‘90s, Behring was doing a lot of traveling around the world, especially to Africa for big game hunting. On his expeditions, local trackers would take him to villages to visit schools and health clinics. Behring was dismayed at the primitive conditions and the lack of basic necessities, so he began to solicit donations of medical and educational supplies to take back with him on future trips. In 1999, the LDS Charities heard about what he was doing and asked him to take emergency food, clothing, blankets and other supplies to Kosovo refugees. After loading Behring’s plane, there was a little space left, so the volunteers asked him to stop by Romania and deliver wheelchairs to a hospital there.
“We had the space for six wheelchairs,” Behring writes. “Little did I know that these six wheelchairs would alter the direction of my life.”
Behring was struck by what he learned on that trip. A doctor in Romania explained that in third world countries, people are often ashamed of the disabled and treat them as less than human. A common belief is that people born with disabilities are being punished for sins of the family, so both they and their families are stigmatized.
“Nobody wants to see them crawl on their stomach and they’re too big to carry,” says Behring, “So they lay in a pile of rags in the back of a hut and just get one meal a day. I have seen people living in boxes in back rooms.”
In Romania, Behring was introduced to an old man, a World War II vet, who had lost his wife and then suffered a stroke.
“When we lifted him into his wheelchair, he started to cry,” Behring remembers. “He
said, ‘Now I can go out and talk to my neighbors.’”
“It was the first time that I really got that feeling of how much (giving someone a wheelchair) means,” he says. “Not only are you giving them mobility, but you’re showing them that somebody cares, and you’re giving their life back.”
“I had previously seen wheelchairs as a form of confinement,” he writes. “I didn’t comprehend the liberation that one could bring to those who are unable to afford them.”
Behring continued to make trips to poor countries around the world delivering wheelchairs. Seeing the gratitude of the recipients and the huge impact that the gifts had on the disabled and their families brought Behring profound joy, and something more-purpose.
In June 2000, Behring launched the Wheelchair Foundation with a pledge of $15 million from his personal foundation and an international board of advisors including Nelson Mandela, King Juan Carlos and Mikhail Gorbachev.
“My father felt this could become a worldwide movement,” says David Behring, president of the Wheelchair Foundation and Ken’s son. “It’s a massive problem and no
one person could do it, so we solicited help from many charitable, religious, corporate to supply 1 million wheelchairs. We’re probably going to reach the half-million mark in
six years.”
Today the Wheelchair Foundation has provided chairs to 145 countries all over the world. The wheelchairs operate manually, are built to get around in primitive areas, and utilize puncture-proof tires to make them more durable.
Each wheelchair can be purchased and delivered for an average of $150. The chairs normally cost $500 in the United States, but the large quantities that the foundation purchases enable them to pay much less. The foundation is gifted with matching funds so that every $75 donation will purchase a wheelchair in a developing country. For developed countries, a $150 donation purchases a wheelchair.
Wheelchairs are sent in containers of 280. Individuals can request that their donation goes to providing a chair for a disabled person in a particular country, but not to a specific person. Religious and civic groups often will sponsor an entire container of chairs to a developing country for $21,000. The groups typically pay their own way to deliver the chairs and often combine the trip with other humanitarian donations or volunteer work.
The foundation distributes wheelchairs through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in each country that determine recipients with the greatest need.
“One provision is that no wheelchairs are sold,” says David. “Everyone who gets a chair is impoverished. They have to have a permanent disability and be poor enough that they can’t afford a wheelchair on their own.”
A year and a half ago, the foundation opened a gallery within the Blackhawk Museum to educate the public about the conditions that currently exist around the world and to explain why there is such an overwhelming need for wheelchairs-estimated at between 100 million to 200 million.
Causes of disability include natural disasters, such as earthquakes, which have particularly devastating effects in third world countries, car accidents (exacerbated by poor road conditions and ramshackle vehicles), war injuries, advanced age and birth defects, which are often caused by contaminated water and lack of prenatal care. Some of the most horrific causes of disabilities are landmines.
“Landmines are not an issue in the U.S., but they’re still being planted in countries all over the world-Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia. Then there are the leftover landmines
from Vietnam and Eastern Europe,” says David. “It only costs one dollar to plant a landmine, but it costs one thousand dollars to remove one, so nobody ever removes them.”
Young children playing and farmers walking through fields often step on the landmines, which are designed to blow off the victim’s legs. In some countries the toll of landmines is unimaginable.
“Angola went through a major civil war about 20 years ago. They have the highest rate of landmine victims in the world,” says David. “It’s estimated that as much as 20 percent of the population of 12 million is disabled.”
The foundation has a multitude of partners who are actively involved in their mission, including Rotary Clubs, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Knights
of Columbus, ChevronTexaco, the Oakland Athletics and many others.
Val Nunes, one of the founders of Wine for Wheels, an organization that raises funds through culinary and wine events, just returned from a distribution in China where
they gave away 360 wheelchairs.
“It was one of the best days I ever had,” he says. “It was as close to heaven as you can
get on earth.”
In the four years that Nunes has volunteered for the Wheelchair Foundation, he has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and made several humanitarian trips all over the world. Nunes and his wife, Belia, plan their vacations around the distributions and have taken along their daughters, too.
“We take the kids to teach them how to be contributors to the world,” he says. “It’s the best way I can spend money and time and energy. When I see (the disabled), and they are so left out of society, and something as small as a wheelchair can completely change their life.”
Beyond improving the lives of the recipients, the foundation may have an even more important and far-reaching role.
“We are creating international friendship, and the wheelchair distribution is the catalyst for it,” says David.
Nunes agrees.
“We went with about 20 volunteers and we shook all their hands and talked to them, spreading good will,” he says. “Sometimes the impression of Americans is that we’re always just consuming. This shows that we care.”
The Behrings believe that because of its size and geopolitics, China is an especially important relationship for the United States. “We have to gain China’s support against terrorism,” says David. “They want their economy to grow, and I always tell people that with economic freedom, political freedom is going to follow.”
In May 2004, the foundation sponsored the donation of 1,000 wheelchairs in China-the largest distribution of wheelchairs in the world.
Ken Behring has learned through his travels that people all over the world are just like us and that it’s important for both peace and the global economy for us to form strong international relationships.
“The surprising thing is how small the world is and how much help is needed,” says Behring. “You don’t have to give a lot.”
“The thanks that you get back is so much greater than what you’re giving,” says David. “I remember this 80-year-old woman in Guatemala who broke down crying and hugging me and she wouldn’t let go. She said in Spanish, ‘I’ve been praying for God to send me an angel ever since I had my accident. You are the angel that God sent me.’”