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From the Heart: Embracing the Ability to Enable Others

This story is redistributed in its entirety from Alamo Today and written by Jody Morgan. You can read the original article by clicking here.

Elizabeth Campos at Montair Elementary found teaching from a wheelchair a daunting experience. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Campos

Thanks to the inspiration of three local men collaborating with the creativity of area educators, 48,000 students in 53 schools are enjoying a fresh approach to Ability Awareness this academic year. Founders of Del Corazon (From-the-Heart), Don Routh, Josh Routh, and Bill Wheeler, support the curriculum with informative videos, personal presentations, and the loan for a week to each participating school of 10 wheelchairs. Children learn to appreciate their own abilities and embrace the challenge of enabling others to realize their full potential. Also known as the Wheelchair Foundation Schools Project, the initiative fosters respect for the strengths of peers coping with intellectual, developmental, and physical challenges, while raising funds to send wheelchair to hundres of individuals who would otherwise remain immobile.

The Wheelchair Foundation, established by Ken Behring in 2000, provides wheelchairs to people around the world who need but cannot afford a wheelchair. In many countries, a wheelchair costs a worker’s entire annual income. Todate, 955,000 wheelchairs have been delivered, bringing mobility, dignity, and hope to individuals aged two to over 102.

Since Bill Wheeler, founder of Blacktie Transportation, first invited Don and Josh to join him on a Wheelchair Foundation distribution trip, “the Three Amigos” have made 23 distribution trips to 14 Latin American countries, delivering 72,000 wheelchairs. Asked to identify his favorite trip, Josh insists: “All of them!” His father, Don, concurs. Each trip is different, every journey life changing.

Josh demonstrates to wheelchair recipients that their personal goals are achievable. Doctors predicted Josh, born with Cerebral Palsy, would be a quadriplegic incapable of speech. At 31, he spoke his first word: “Soup!” His indefatigable spirit continues to feed his father’s dedication. A graduate of San Ramon Valley High School, Josh relies on a wheelchair for mobility. Now 35, he lives independently, drives his own car to work, and has multiple sports accomplishments to his credit.

In Paraguay, From-the-Heart delivered a wheelchair to another Josh. Seeing his own son in the four-year old also coping with Cerebral Palsy, Don translated his parental experience into a message of hope for the mother. Recalling how grateful he would have been for the advice of a mentor, Don happily shares his experience, encouraging care givers to believe in the possibility that their charges will be, likeJosh, successful adults.

In spring 2012, Don Routh presented the concept of a schools program to Pleasanton Unified School District (PUSD) Superintendent Parvin Ahmadi. Ahmadi immediately recognized the value. “The potential of this endeavor as a true service learning project was incredible, and it was obvious that the impact to all involved would be profound,” she comments. “The project allows our students to learn and apply their knowledge while serving others globally. “Six PUSD elementary schools participated the following academic year. Six teachers joined a wheelchair distribution tour that summer and all came back as zealous advocates of the program.

Wheelchairs delivered to Costa Rica and Honduras this summer will carry the SRVUSD or PUSD logo, connecting donors and recipient.

The San Ramon Valley Unified School District (SRVUSD) recommended the project to all of its schools for 2013-2014, as did PUSD. Over the course of four months from late spring through summer, Don worked with Special Needs Parents and SRVUSD professionals to enhance the existing Ability Awareness curriculum to include lesson plans for all grades addressing physical, intellectual and developmental issues.

Terry Koehne, SRVUSD Communications Director, gladly accepted the task of promoting the program with district principals. “Don is amazing he provides every ounce of support a school needs, including background information, monthly newsletters, and updates, and makes himself available to do presentations for any group that needs it. “Support materials include a 17 page book list, movie suggestions featuring characters coping with disability, fun ways to try wheelchairs, and fundraising ideas. Proud that the fundraising aspect of the program will provide hundreds of wheelchairs to people who lack mobility, Koehne notes, “Providing students with real opportunities to experience the issue themselves gives more meaning to the fundraising component, and inspires them to get even more involved.”

Students and faculty members find Don Routh’s presentation riveting. He opens up by explaining “There are more than 100 million people with physical disabilities worldwide who are in need of a wheelchair. Thirty million of these are children and 90% of them do not to to school.” Lacking mobility, they have no access to education and often no social interaction with other children. Sometimes they have to crawl to reach basic items beyond their reach.

Montair Elementary School ran the project in October/November, embedding the program in all aspects of academics. Coin counting supported math, writing persuasive letters to the business community underscored language lessons, and walking into Danville to speak to local business leaders bolstered oral presentation skills. Dennis Simkin, Vice President, Manager recalls the day the students came to J.Rockcliff. “I was in awe of how professional and cute they were. “Simkin estimates that 30 or 40 people came out to hear their presentation.

Taking turns, students participated in a wheelchair basketball game. When one student finally managed to score, the crowd erupted in cheers. Elizabeth Campos spent part of a day teaching in a wheelchair and found maneuvering around her classroom a major challenge. Months later, in February, another school activity highlighted how much the project affected students. Campos wrote: “At Montair this week we are participating in a No-Name-Calling Week, and as Leadership was discussing ways to promote this, a few students brought up the fact that they actually think name-calling has decreased at school since Ability Awareness and the Wheelchair Foundation project because kids learned to accept others for who they are, no matter what they look like or their abilities.”

8 year-old Alejandro’s grandmother carried him to receive his first wheelchair, delivered by From-the Hart in March.

Gale Ranch Middle School ran the program in February. Counselor Lori Olson volunteered to coordinate. The opportunity for a field trip to the Blackhawk Automotive Museum was a huge incentive for students, and they returned from meeting Wheelchair Foundation President David Behring even morec ommitted to the cause. Blacktie provides field trip transportation and also stores and delivers the two sets of project wheelchairs.

Student reflections indicate how much Gale Ranch pupils learned spending time in a wheelchair. One student commented, “Before this I had never really thought about being in a wheelchair, not being able to do things normal people could, and feeling like you are separated from everyone.” Friends treated them differently. Another student said, “I now know that people in a wheelchair just wanted to be treated the same way as everyone else.”The value of mobility was clearly recognized. A third student said, “When the founder, Don, came to our school, he said not to feel sorry for the people who have wheelchairs but for the people who don’t have one.”

San Ramon Valley High Schoo land Monte Vista are holding Basketball Game Fundraisers showcasing their athletes competing against the nationally ranked BORP Warriors Wheelchair team. Local teams have volunteered to accept the challenge of playing in wheelchairs. CarlyLutz, SRVHS Leadership student reports that signupsfor “Ride-in-a-Wheelchair for a Day” are filling up quickly. Janet Willford, SRVHS Leadership teacher, describes planned lunchtime activities: “a wheelchair relay race, wheelchair bowling, and a pep rally.”

Costa Rica and Honduras (getting Foundation donations for the first time )are slated to each receive a container of 280 wheelchairs at a cost of $42,000 per container. As of April 17th, $61,258.05 has been collected, with many schools about to commence the project. Teachers, parents, and older students accompanied by an adult have been invited to come on this summer’s distributions trips. Ken Behring is awarding stipends of $2,000 toward travel costs to the elementary, middle, and high school achieving the highest per student donations.

Visit www.del-corazon.org for information or to donate.

May 13, 2014/by dcox

News

Turning The Wheels

This article is written by Jeremy Walsh of the San Ramon / Danville Express and can be viewed in it’s entirety here.

Turning the wheels

Wheelchair project aims to raise awareness, funds in San Ramon Valley schools

Students in the San Ramon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area are learning valuable lessons about physical and mental disabilities through a burgeoning awareness program.

Wheelchair relays at Valley View Elementary in Pleasanton on April 17. (Photo by Jeremy Walsh)

By placing wheelchairs on local campuses and providing educational information to school leaders, the Wheelchair Foundation’s From the Heart schools project aims to raise awareness about disabilities in the world, inform local students about issues faced by people with disabilities and generate funds for people in need of wheelchairs.

“We want it to be a lot more than a fundraiser,” said Don Routh, one of the volunteers spearheading the foundation’s effort. “I’m just as excited about raising awareness about mobility,” Routh said, adding that he enjoys helping students realize, “It’s OK to be in a wheelchair, (and) you shouldn’t be afraid of people in wheelchairs.”

Awareness campaigns like From the Heart have held special meaning for Routh for more than three decades.

“I’ve been an advocate for people with disabilities ever since my son was diagnosed (with cerebral palsy) at 1 year old, which would be 34 years ago,” said Routh, a retired business executive from San Ramon. “He’s my inspiration.”

With the help of his adult son Josh — who uses a wheelchair — and friend and Pleasanton business owner Bill Wheeler, Routh coordinates with the foundation and education leaders to present the From the Heart program at 48 Bay Area schools, primarily in the San Ramon Valley and Pleasanton school districts.

“It is a unique opportunity for our community to create awareness with our students around global mobility issues while raising awareness with these same students about the need for mobility in the world,” said Mary Shelton, San Ramon Valley schools superintendent. “This project impacts our students tremendously while making a tangible difference in the world.”

To date, schools involved in the project have raised about $65,000, putting organizers more than three-quarters of the way to the goal amount needed to bring 560 wheelchairs — two shipping containers’ worth — to people in need in Costa Rica and Honduras this summer.

“The From the Heart schools project has certainly exceeded our expectations,” said Eva Carleton, director of operations for the Wheelchair Foundation. “While we are very appreciative of the funds that are being raised to provide wheelchairs to those in need, we are even more excited about the awareness that is being raised.”

Pleasanton’s Valley View Elementary School was one of two local campuses to gain first-hand experience last week, being provided with demo wheelchairs for students and staff to use.

“I myself sat in a wheelchair and tried to get around the campus,” Valley View principal Rafael Cruz said on April 17. “Looks easier than it actually is.”

Students also got the chance to maneuver themselves in wheelchairs or watch their peers do so, as well as take part in targeted lessons.

Valley View fifth-grader Nicole Brownen, sitting in her class’s demo wheelchair, cuts out a shape using her non-dominant left hand, part of an ability-awareness lesson highlighting fine motor skills. (Photo by Jeremy Walsh)

In her fifth-grade class, Valley View teacher Jessica Dehl had her students cut out four shapes outlined on a piece of paper, but told them to use the scissors in their non-dominant hand — an exercise aimed at making the students think about the impact of having diminished fine motor skills.

Dehl gave her students a 10-minute time limit and said they’d be graded on how straight their lines were.

“That’s not fair,” one girl said.

Most of Dehl’s fifth-graders struggled to cut shapes, like stars and diamonds, to their liking.

“This is impossible,” a student said.

Another followed with, “I can’t do this.” And a third child added, “The heart (shape) is the hardest because of the curve.”

At the end of the exercise, Dehl — who taught most of the morning from a wheelchair — debriefed with her students, asking them to reflect on their experience completing the activity despite physical difficulty.

“Did it change who you were as a person?” she asked. “Did it change how smart you were?”

The class responded with a resounding, “No.”

“You didn’t change the person you were because of how well you cut,” Dehl told her students.

Having wheelchairs on campus for a week was unique for the children at Valley View, as there are currently no students who regularly use wheelchairs enrolled at the school, according to Cruz.

From the Heart offers a variety of personal experiences to students and teachers alike.

Jennifer Gonzalez, speech pathologist at Valley View, plans to deliver wheelchairs in Honduras this July with Wheelchair Foundation reps and five teachers from Pleasanton’s Lydiksen Elementary School.

“I look forward to the experience and actually doing the wheelchair distributions at the different locations,” Gonzalez said.

The Valley View fundraiser, which ends on Wednesday, has generated just over $3,000 to date, Cruz said.

Fifth-grade teacher Jessica Dehl teaches from a wheelchair April 17 at Valley View Elementary in Pleasanton. (Photo by Jeremy Walsh)

Vintage Hills Elementary School in Pleasanton has raised the most money per-student thus far, with an average of $8.55 per pupil, Routh said.

The campus to raise the most money overall to date is Gale Ranch Middle School in San Ramon, which collected just over $7,500 in late February and early March, according to school counselor Lori Olson, who helped lead From the Heart at Gale Ranch.

“I decided to lead ours because I actually have a sister in a wheelchair, so I know how important the cause is to provide wheelchairs for people that don’t have them in other countries. In some countries people are confined to their beds, and don’t have access to an education because of it,” she said.

Nearly every public school in the San Ramon Valley and Pleasanton participated in the project this school year, according to Routh. Treeview Elementary School in Hayward and Oakland’s Skyline High School (Routh’s alma mater) were also involved.

“This has been a wonderful service-learning project for our students in that not only do students help raise funds for wheelchairs, but they also have tremendous learning opportunities directly related to academic subjects,” said Parvin Ahmadi, Pleasanton schools superintendent.

Eight schools, including six in Pleasanton, took part in the program last year.

Routh said he hopes to have 50-60 Bay Area schools participate next school year, and then “expand it significantly” starting in the 2015-16 term.

Disability outreach in local schools goes beyond the From the Heart project, according to Routh, who has helped organize fundraising basketball games at San Ramon Valley High (on Tuesday) and Monte Vista High (May 6).

The schools’ basketball programs will play against the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program’s Junior Road Warriors wheelchair basketball team, starting at 7 p.m. on the respective nights. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for students.

Founded by Blackhawk developer, businessman and philanthropist Kenneth E. Behring in 2000, the Wheelchair Foundation aims to create awareness about physical disabilities and deliver wheelchairs to those in need throughout the world. To date, the foundation has delivered or committed 951,323 wheelchairs worldwide, according to its website.

To learn more about From the Heart and other efforts by the Rouths and Wheeler, visit their website, called “Del Corazon.”

Valley View Elementary students take part in wheelchair relays April 17. (Photo by Jeremy Walsh)

April 30, 2014/by dcox

News

Group raises kids' awareness of disabilities

This article is borrowed from the Contra Costa Times and is shared in it’s entirety. To read the original article written by Robert Jordan click here.

SAN RAMON — Don Routh’s lips still tremble and his eyes fight back tears as he recalls the day 34 years ago when doctors told him that his then 1-year-old son, Josh, would never speak or have use of his limbs.

Doctors diagnosed Josh with cerebral palsy, a developmental disability that is caused by brain damage — usually sustained in the womb or at birth — that affects body movement, according to United Celebral Palsy.

“I was terrified,” said Routh, who adopted Josh when he was two days old. “That was my son and to hear that he would be a quadriplegic was tough. … But you can either bury your head in the sand or you can embrace it.”

Don Routh, of the Del Corazon foundation, speaks to students and teachers Feb. 6 at Green Valley Elementary School in Danville. Del Corazon helps raise money for several charitable causes, especially the Wheelchair Foundation and El Oasis Orphanage. Photo by Jim Stevens / Bay Area News Group

Routh has done more than embrace it. He has spent his money and time advocating for people with disabilities. The doctors were wrong about Josh. Josh, 35, lives by himself in San Ramon and works as a clerk at Nob Hill Foods.

Together Routh, Josh and Bill Wheeler, the owner of Black Tie Transportation in Pleasanton, have spent the past nine years highlighting world mobility issues and the need for wheelchairs through Del Corazon, the organization the trio started to partner with the Danville-based Wheelchair Foundation. Del Corazon has delivered more than 7,000 wheelchairs to Mexico and Central and South America.

“Josh was born here, but if he was born in a developing country he would not have had the same opportunities,” said Routh, a retired businessman who was a partner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers. “We are helping give others a fighting chance.”

Last year, the trio incorporated schools into their organization with a program that not only raises funds to buy wheelchairs but also provide students a chance to learn about the situation people with disabilities face in the developing world. More than 109 million people with a disability need a wheelchair in the developing world, according to Del Corazon. With help from the Wheelchair Foundation, Del Corazon can deliver wheelchairs for $150 each.

In its first year at eight schools in Pleasanton, Del Corazon raised $18,000. The program expanded to 50 schools this year in Pleasanton, San Ramon, Danville, Oakland and Hayward with a goal to raise $100,000 this year and eventually expand to other parts of the Bay Area.

“This program was different from a lot of other projects we get,” said Parvin Ahmadi, the Pleasanton schools superintendent. “This one has the potential to be a really good service learning project. It is ongoing, and regardless of how old you are, you can be involved.”

Third-graders, from left, Ava Haubner, 8, and Sidney White, 8, sitting in wheelchairs, eat lunch Feb. 7 at Vintage Hills Elementary School in Pleasanton. Photo by Anda Chu / Bay Area News Group

Routh spent the summer with staff from the San Ramon Valley school district’s Ability Awareness Program developing curriculum based on mobility and wheelchairs that accompanies fundraising efforts that students, parents and teachers participate in. Students from kindergarten to high school have a chance to learn about mobility and wheelchairs through subjects from English to physics.

“Students learned a lot about what it means to help others, and that is just a powerful message,” said Kelly Hoffmann, a second-grade teacher at Bollinger Canyon Elementary in San Ramon. “They learned that if you contribute $2 it can make a difference in another person’s life.”

Bollinger Canyon chose to incorporate the Del Corazon program into its lessons plan for a month and set and met a goal of raising $2.50 per student.

In Pleasanton, the Lydiksen Elementary community was one of the pilot schools and collected more than $5,000 in a month, enough to buy 34 wheelchairs for people in Guatemala. Beyond the service learning and fundraising that the school did, teachers from the school also paid their own way to Guatemala to help Routh, Josh and Wheeler deliver the chairs.

“The first chair we delivered was to a woman who had not been out of her bedroom for six years,” said Kimberly Hereld, a fifth-grade teacher at Lydiksen. “We all cried because for $150 we were able to make a difference, and it was our kids that made that happen.” Routh, Josh and Wheeler, with the help of the Wheelchair Foundation, have delivered wheelchairs to 13 countries in Central and South America and hope to visit all 21 countries, with Honduras and Costa Rica scheduled for July.

Lydiksen Elementary is preparing to raise funds in March to help buy wheelchairs for the Honduras trip. In addition, Del Corazon also scheduled two charity basketball games with Monte Vista and San Ramon Valley High School’s basketball programs playing against the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program’s wheelchair basketball team on April 29 and May 6.

All the proceeds go toward purchasing and delivering wheelchairs.

“We get to give kids their freedom back,” Josh Routh said.

“We are so blessed and take for granted what we have.” Added Wheeler, “Josh is the X-factor and sets an example for all the kids,” said Wheeler. “He gets around independently, and the kids see what he can do and say, ‘I am like him.’ ”

Fourth-grader Eddie Park, 9, navigates through his classroomin a wheelchair Feb. 7 at Vintage Hills Elementary School in Pleasanton. Students at the school had the use of 10 wheelchairs to experience what it is like to navigate the campus in one. Photo by Anda Chu / Bay Area News Group

For more information on Del Corazon visit del-corazon.org.

DEL CORAZON

For more on Del Corazon, visit del-corazon.org.
For more on the Wheelchair Foundation, visit www/wheelchairfoundation.org.

February 25, 2014/by dcox

new site, News

The Wheelchair Foundation: Giving Hope – Gaining Purpose

This article taken in it’s entirety and written by Jody Morgan appeared in both the Danville Today News as well as the Alamo Today.

The Wheelchair Foundation has delivered nearly 920,000 wheelchairs in over 150 countries since its inception in 2000. As founder Kenneth Behring’s original goal of giving one million wheelchairs to disabled individuals around the world nears fulfillment, global need continues to grow. An estimated 100 million people unable to afford a wheelchair are waiting in hidden corners of the earth for the chance to experience the empowerment of mobility.

Josh Routh connects with a nonagenarian in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, one of many wheelchair recipients from 4-96 years of age hea has met in Latin America. Photo courtesy of Don Routh

Wheelchairs were not among the donation Behring was packing in his private plane in 1999 when LSD Charities (the humanitarian outreach branch of the Latter Day Saints) asked him to drop off their aid packages en route to his African destination He readily agreed. Included in that cargo were six wheelchairs bound for a hospital in Romania. “Little did I know” he writes, “that those six wheelchairs would change the direction of my life.”

Behring, a successful Danville developer, defines the joy generated by setting a wheelchair recipient’s dreams in motion as the acheivement of purpose. In his 2004 autobiography Road to Purpose, he recount, “I lifted a small Vietnamese girl from the ground and placed her in a wheelchair. In that instant, she found hope…Her face opened into a smile, her eyes as bright as the noontime sky. And I knew for all she had changed in that moment, I had changed even more.”

Initially, Behring explored recycling used wheelchairs. The process proved the reverse of cost-effective. Packaging for shipment added to the expense of parts and labor for repairs. Then Behring asked manufacturers to design a durable wheelchair priced according to the high volume of orders he anticipated. One product seemed perfect, but it required two hours to piece together when uncrated. Today’s model comes in five sizes, ordered with regular or all-terrain tires, and can be assembled in 15 minutes. Averaging shipping costs to all destinations, the Foundation can deliver each wheelchair for just $150. In Bolivia a comparable product costs $1,700. In many countries, the price of a wheelchair exceeds an average laborer’s annual income.

The Wheelchair Foundation runs an administratively lean operation, funneling virtually every dollar into providing wheelchairs. Volunteers and service organizations across America do much of the fundraising. Unanimously declaring the positive return on their investment inestimable donors traveling on distribution trips pay their own expenses. On the receiving end, similar groups arrange local logistics including identification of recipients and appropriate configuration of the wheelchairs they require. They also fund and coordinate transportation to remote locations where wheelchairs are most needed. Rotary International, with clubs in over 200 countries, is frequently involved in all aspect of the process.

Since Bill Wheeler, founder of Blacktie Transportation, invited them on their first journey, Josh Routh and his father Don have made 20 distribution trips to 11 countries. In the remote town Juigalpa, Nicaragua, they met a 26 year-old woman who had been waiting eight years to acquire the wheelchair she needed to utilize the scholarship to Managua University she earned as a high school honors graduate. Finally enabled to pursue her studies, she chose psychology so she could hep families coping with disabilities In poorer places, when one family member is disabled, another often has to stay home from school or work to act as a caregiver.

Josh tears up as he describes a recipient brought to a wheelchair distribution in a wheelbarrow and another crawling through the dust to get there. Born with cerebral palsy, Josh has never walked. Although doctors predicted he would remain a quadriplegic, never uttering an intelligible word, the 33-year old San Ramon resident drives his own car and lives independently. A cashier at Nob Hill, Josh dedicates much of his time to aiding others.

Hayward students connected with peers in El Salvador by sending wheelchairs and t-shirts.

“When you give someone the gift of mobility, you are giving them freedom and dignity…and when someone has freedom and dignity then they have hope for the future,” explains Don Routh. Now retired, Don spreads awareness of the worldwide need for the means of mobility and the elation engendered by improving the life of each wheelchair recipient. One of his initiatives at a Hayward elementary school gave low-income Latino students the opportunity to celebrate joy in their joint accomplishment: raising enough money to send six wheelchairs to less fortunate peers in El Salvador.

Don Routh plans to introduce the program the “Three Amigos” (Don, Josh and Bill) are currently piloting with the Pleasanton Unified School District to additional area school districts this spring. They provide live and video presentations, posters, collection containers, and fundraising ideas. Wheeler offers Blacktie’s community bus free for one field trip per school to either the Blackhawk Museum/Wheelchair Foundation exhibits or a wheelchair sport event. Ten wheelchairs are available for schools to borrow in rotation for students to test drive or use in fundraising races or sport competitions. For information, email do******@co*****.net

Eva Carleton, Regional Director of Operations of Latin America and the Caribbean, travels on 3-4 distribution trips a year while coordinating the delivery of 40-50 projects. Every working day she helps provide someone with what sh considers a basic human right: a wheelchair. “Without a wheelchair,” Carleton notes, “you have to ask for everything you need.” Eva’s mother’s quality of life improved dramatically once she accepted how enabling the device could be. She no longer has to ring for a nurse every time she wants a simple object like a tissue.

In a Colombian community several hours from Bogota, Carleton met a woman who had been unable to work for five years due to a spinal injury. Thanks to her Foundation wheelchair, she was back at her job. Minutes later, Eva encountered another wheelchair recipient happily earning money keeping parked cars safe.

“It’s always a joy to give someone a wheelchair and it is an even greater joy to personally watch and hear how that wheelchair improved their life,” explains David Behring, President of the Wheelchair Foundation. David met Tran Nghia in 2003. Born with a neurological disorder, the Vietnamese high school student depended on family and friends to carry her everywhere. She needed a wheelchair to attend university to study English and become a doctor. The following year David visited her family and they kept in touch. In November 2012 they met again in Hanoi. “Nghia unfortunately could not become a doctor due to her disability but she did learn English and translates documents for a Vietnamese company. … Her smile was as radiant as I remembered it back in 2003.”

A wheelchair recipient with Kenneth Behring (right). Photo courtesy of the Wheelchair Foundation

Kenneth Behring make a point of shaking the hand of every wheelchair recipient. “All we ask in return is a smile.” Partnering with non-governmental agencies permits the Wheelchair Foundation to give the gift of mobility with no strings attached. Creating global friendship and promoting the joy of giving are additional aspects of this non-profit organization’s mission “to deliver a wheelchair to every child, teen, and adult in the world who needs one, but cannot afford one.”

The Wheelchair Foundation’s annual Charity Ball at the Blackhawk Museum February 23rd is open to the public as are all Foundation fundraisers. Jeff Behring, Director of Special Benefits, offers a Wine for Wheels private party plan getting rave reviews nationwide as a means for finding personal purpose while sharing fun with friends. To register for the Charity Ball, plan a Wine for Wheels event, learn more about Foundation activities or to make a donation, visit www.wheelchairfoundation.org. Road to Purpose is available at the Danville Library.

February 7, 2013/by dcox

new site, Press Releases

Disabled cashier helps others get around

Like OTHER cashiers at Nob Hill Foods in San Ramon, Josh Routh stands behind his counter and scans groceries for shoppers. What’s unique about Routh, though, is that he uses a wheelchair when he’s not working.

When working, “I stand up and hold the counter with my left hand,” said Routh, 30.

Routh was initially hired in 2000 to bag groceries, but showed such promise that he was promoted to cashier. Working at Nob Hill Foods allows him to live an independent life that his parents never imagined for him when they first learned he had cerebral palsy, a condition that in Routh’s case was caused by lack of oxygen to the brain during or just after his birth.

Don Routh, Josh’s father, said his son was adopted before any signs of the condition appeared.

“Ironically, we chose to adopt because my ex-wife had a genetic predisposition to having a disabled child,” he said.

Don recalls how doctors had predicted that his son would be a quadriplegic and unable to talk. With years of therapy and education, Josh progressed beyond expectations and even excelled at certain sports, including basketball.

To support his ability to work and live independently, Josh keeps in touch with a job coach provided through the Lafayette-based nonprofit Futures Explored. The agency’s mission is to provide life skills and work-related training to adults with developmental disabilities, as well as help those adults reach their fullest potential.

Outside of work, Josh finds time to help deliver wheelchairs in partnership with the Wheelchair Foundation and the Rotary Club of Pleasanton North, of which his father is a member.

“We’ve traveled together eight times to six countries,” said Don. “We’ve seen people arrive for their wheelchairs by truck, bus, on horseback, in a wheelbarrow, sometimes crawling, but most often carried by parents and siblings.”

The Rouths have traveled to Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru. This year they plan to travel with other Rotarians to Brazil and Chile, and bring the total of wheelchairs that Josh has helped deliver to 2,800.

“It’s a life-changing experience to help someone into a new wheelchair,” said Josh, who was named an honorary member of the Rotary Club.

The Rouths point out that as many as 100 million people worldwide need wheelchairs, though less than 1 percent have access to one. Through its partnerships, the Wheelchair Foundation purchases and delivers a wheelchair for a donation of just $150, a very affordable cost, said Don, who notes that a comparable wheelchair in Bolivia costs about $1,000.

Josh and his father also have accompanied Rotarians five times to support an orphanage in Baja California.

In fact, for Josh’s 30th birthday, his dad asked if he wanted to do something special, perhaps fly to Las Vegas.

But, “he said he had everything he needed and wanted to do something for the kids at the orphanage,” said Don.

As Don gathered the birthday money from family members, a friend in Rotary heard about Josh’s wish and donated $600. Soon the Rouths received more money and a check from the Rotary Club itself. By the time they were finished, they collected $3,600, which Josh recently delivered in person when Rotarians traveled to install a solar-powered well for the orphanage at Christmas.

Both Josh and his dad encourage anyone who would like to support their upcoming delivery of wheelchairs to consider making a $150 donation.

For details about donating, e-mail Don Routh at do******@co*****.net.

February 3, 2010/0 Comments/by dcox