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Zeng Ling Hui is a physically disabled woman living in Fulong Village Pengzhou City which is the harder-hit area of the 5.12 Earthquake in 2008. Unfortunately, she cannot afford a common wheelchair due to poverty and the only thing she can do is sit at home. The serious damage of a facility in the village caused by the disaster made Zeng Ling Hui’ s life even more difficult and the access of communications between her and the outside world has been cut off thoroughly.

image001But now she can go out freely to the vivid outside world in the wheelchair sent free by the Chengdu Disabled Persons’ Federation. She can often go downtown or to the market, talk with the villagers and witness the change around her. The wheelchair gives her the possibility to enjoy the bright sunshine, the colorful world and the warm love as well as improve the quality of her life.

Kurt was fussing over the last details on one of his paintings when the deafening tropical downpour stopped suddenly, as if to awaken him from a dream. Born and raised near the Guatemalan border in Belize, the 28-year-old artist created bright acrylic paintings of the tropical sea nearby. He sensed movement behind him. As he turned, a sharp pain stung his neck and back. He lost consciousness. When he awoke in the infirmary, he was paralyzed. An attacker’s knife had just barely nicked his spine, but he would never again feel the right side of his body. His life as an artist was over, the physician told him, nor would he walk again.

kurtBut Kurt had other plans. He would thrash around with his hand over and over again until he could grab the window sill next to his bed. After a few weeks, he could raise his slender frame up high enough to see the ocean. Ten months of struggle put him back on his feet, although he would need crutches and patience to take even a few steps.

Kurt is one of 800,000 people worldwide to get a little more mobility from a decade-old nonprofit started by Blackhawk developer Ken Behring and his sons, David and Jeff, near San Francisco, California. Volunteers from their Wheelchair Foundation have shipped and assembled chairs in dozens of countries. Donors contribute US$150 for a wheelchair that would cost over $1,000 here in the little village of San Pedro, Belize, south of Mexico.

My wife, Bonita, and my ten-year-old daughter, Vanessa, joined 48 California donors on this trip. We pulled wheelchairs from boxes, pumped tires, attached footrests and lifted people out of broken wheelchairs into new ones. Some had never even experienced a wheelchair. In Old Belize, gangs ruled the neighborhoods and thousands still live on dirt floors in rotting wood shacks without adequate electricity or sanitation. We saw a crocodile crawl through garbage in an open drain while children played soccer in the street a few steps away.

When we met Kurt yesterday, it had been two years since he’d been injured. He was proud to be an artist again. In a ceremony in the village’s tiny ‘Central Park’, on a bright, white, sandy beach, we presented him with a new chair–one of 280 recipients on this trip to Central America. Before the event, Kurt spread out a collection of aqua-colored 8×10 paintings done painstakingly with his twisted hand. He told the crowd: “I taught myself to paint with my left hand. I can’t feel the brush, but my eyes tell my fingers what to do.”

Kurt said that his art was an obsession, but it still was not enough to get him out of bed everyday. What moved him was the need to make a living and help people who are “less fortunate”– a concept that’s hard to imagine as you see him barely manage to stand in crutches. When he’s not painting, he collects clothes for pennies that he sells for a few dollars. This week’s profits helped buy medical care for a friend crippled in a drive-by shooting. Kurt is rushing to keep his pal’s immobile limbs alive with physical therapy. He’s also raising funds for surgery necessary to remove a bullet still lodged in his friend’s back before it becomes infected and deadly.

That’s what drives Kurt to go to great effort to get up each morning. “This very moment there is someone out there who needs you,” he said. “God gave me a second chance. He gave me a reason for living. Life is about feeling passion and feeling needed. I could stay in bed, but where would my friends be?”

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by Mark Thompson

SOURCE: Leader Power Tools

Ken Behring, an American billionaire, made his fortune from poor beginnings through a series of businesses ranging from cars to real estate. But once he started gracing the pages of the rich lists, his attention turned to a wide range of philanthropic projects.

book-cover

The book “Road to Purpose” documents the life of founder Kenneth E. Behring and is dedicated to all of the people in the world struggling with immobility.

He is the founder of the Wheelchair Foundation, donating 780,000 wheelchairs to 155 countries worldwide.

In China, the foundation has donated 262,000 wheelchairs. For the world Expo they are launching the Red Chair campaign with 2000 chairs donated to local community centers and including volunteers with each chair to help the recipient.

Behring has also donated to a number of museums worldwide, including record breaking donations to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. In China avid hunter Behring has donated to a number of animal related exhibitions in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjing and Dalian.

He was in early talks recently about donations for a Natural History Museum in Shanghai and development of retirement homes in China.

Q: Why did you start in the philanthropy field?

A: I live by the motto that I know how to earn money, spend money and give money. I have lived a wonderful life and I’ve had the opportunity to do everything I wanted, so it was time to do something more fulfilling.

As simple as it is, a wheelchair can change a person’s life completely — allowing them to go to work or school. And there’s an increasing need everyday in China with an aging population. All we want in return is a smile. In China, people particularly appreciate it because they’re not used to getting something for nothing. Sometimes I see the tears run down their face.

Q: What recipient stories have stayed in your mind?

A: I’m struck by people who come back to us with their stories after getting a wheelchair. These people are not disabled, they’re strong. There was a Chinese man, for example, who had gangrene in his leg and didn’t have the US$100 for an operation to save his life. We donated that and also a wheelchair. Then we heard his wife had found a job and he was caring for the family.

When I went to Beijing to give out wheelchairs, I met many people who had been trapped in their homes for 25 years. Similarly a woman in Turkey was trapped in bed for 35 years. Some young people just wanted to go outside and touch a leaf with their new mobility, because they’d never been able to do so.

Q: Why are you interested in retirement homes in China?

A: I think it’s a problem that’s not addressed in China with its rapidly aging population. There are people stuck up six flights of stairs with no elevator, and maybe with a broken hip. That’s not a life. I want to give them a reason to live.

When I was 40 years old I was developing retirement homes in Florida. I remember I had a scotch with them on New Year’s Eve and they were all in their 70s. We created not just buildings but a way of living with activities to keep them busy and being with others of the same age.

I really believed in the product, which is also why it was successful.

Q: Why are you interested in building museums and educational projects?

A: It’s great giving to young people because they adapt so much faster. Young people are our future. I’m so impressed by how hard students work here, and the intense competition for a place in university.

The standards here are higher than anywhere else in the world. That’s the reason China is more and more successful.

Q: Tell me about your early life and path to success?

A: We were poor and I worked hard. I never felt deprived, but my parents didn’t have much time for me so that meant I learned to make decisions by myself. That also requires being a bit of a rebel, never listening to anyone else.

However if something didn’t work I would be flexible to change. Many people want to prove they’re right — that’s not my attitude at all.

I have created businesses in everything from cars to funeral homes and feel the need to move to a new challenge every 10 years or so.

Q: What do you think of the entrepreneurial spirit in China?

A: China is willing to look at success and copy it. They’re not afraid of asking for help — which was also my attitude throughout my entrepreneurial career.

Of course every place has its problems, like air quality, water and traffic.

But there is a spirit of trying to find how we can solve these problems, not why it can’t be solved.

SOURCE: Shanghai Daily

El Granada resident Evelyn Moseley, 16, knew only a little Spanish, but had no problem connecting to the young woman in Mazatlan, Mexico, whom she had just lifted into a wheelchair.

In halting Spanish, Moseley asked the Mexican girl about herself — and learned they shared much in common. “I asked her age, and she said 16, and that moment hit me because it (related) to me,” she said. “I imagined my life if I was in that kind of situation. It made me really think more.”

Photo courtesy Millie Golder The Half Moon Bay Interact Club with adults Millie Golder and Darcie Galle, pose with a wheelchair recipient in Mazatlan. Top row from top left, a Foster City Rotarian, Golder, Rose Logan, Emily Kelley, Melissa Kalkin, Genna St. Andrew, Lena King; bottom row, Liana Brinkmeier, Galle, Colleen Flynn, the wheelchair recipient, Anita Oettel-Flaherty and seated in front, Simone Vadroff. Not pictured: Evelyn Moseley, Steve Wilson.

Photo courtesy Millie Golder
The Half Moon Bay Interact Club with adults Millie Golder and Darcie Galle, pose with a wheelchair recipient in Mazatlan. Top row from top left, a Foster City Rotarian, Golder, Rose Logan, Emily Kelley, Melissa Kalkin, Genna St. Andrew, Lena King; bottom row, Liana Brinkmeier, Galle, Colleen Flynn, the wheelchair recipient, Anita Oettel-Flaherty and seated in front, Simone Vadroff. Not pictured: Evelyn Moseley, Steve Wilson.

The situation that brought Moseley to Mexico depended on those kind of connections. Moseley visited Mazatlan with the Half Moon Bay Interact Club Nov. 11 through Nov. 15. She is the president of the club and was on a humanitarian trip that included wheelchair distribution.

Interact is a youth contingent of Rotary International focusing on humanitarian work. The Coastside teens are part of the 80-plus-member Half Moon Bay Interact club, under the guidance of Half Moon Bay Rotarian Millie Golder.

The activities and fundraisers in which the club has been involved, locally and beyond, include brown-bag lunch distribution to the homeless in San Francisco, Adopt-a-Family, beach cleanups, the Teddy Bear Clinic, Candy Land, Rotary regional activities and more.

The club earmarked $3,000 for wheelchairs and school supplies for this, the fourth trip to Mazatlan.

Besides Moseley, local Interactors who made the trip included Liana Brinkmeier, Colleen Flynn, club Vice President Melissa Kalkin, Emily Kelley, Lena King, Anita Oettel-Flaherty, Genna St. Andrews, Rose Logan and Simone Vandroff.

The local teens were chosen for the trip on the basis of their community service hours through club work and were accompanied by Golder, her daughter Darcie Galle and fellow Rotarian Steve Wilson. They were part of a larger group that included members of the Foster City Rotary Club and Interact, under the auspices of the Rotary Wheelchair Foundation and under strict rules protecting the teens.

The trip opened a window into another world for the teens.

“When they leave their parents and go through the gate at San Francisco International Airport, they come back different people when they come through those gates again,” said Golder. “They come back realizing how fortunate we are, how lucky we are to live here.”

During the trip, the Interactors visited local schools supported by the Foster City Rotary club, handing out school supplies and “humanitarian bags” packed with toys for the children, soccer uniforms and trophies for the teens and adult items like cosmetics. They also visited an orphanage that served infants to 18-year-olds.

There was time for fun with Mazatlan peers when the Interactors faced locals for a friendly soccer game. But the heart of the trip was the wheelchair distribution at a large public gym, when the teens assembled around 125 wheelchairs and handed them out to users whose families brought them to the gym.

To reach the many, often bedridden wheelchair users unable to get to the gym, Interactors and adults traveled to frequently impoverished homes, where they were met with tears of gratitude.

It was on one such home visit that Kalkin, also 16, came face to face with what the Mazatlan trip was all about. She had had some idea of what to expect from elder sister Kristin, a recent Half Moon Bay High graduate also involved with Interact. But her sister’s words did not prepare her for all she would feel as she lifted an elderly woman into a new chair.

“The first person I put in a wheelchair was big for me,” said the El Granada teen. “I didn’t understand how much it would impact me, to see how happy they are” to get their chairs.

Often, the Interactors said, the tears of gratitude came from not just recipients and families but caregivers as well.

There was also dinner with the Mazatlan city council and a side trip to paint an elementary school.

And there were the memories, which did not fade.

“It was life-changing,” said Kalkin, noting that the Mazatlan residents she observed seemed happy, even amid poverty. “It was really moving and made me appreciate what I have. If they can be happy with the little they have, I can too, and I appreciate my family more.”

“It made me a more compassionate person, made me live life in a way to be more grateful, more happy in general,” said Moseley.

Making the trip to help the Mazatlan people, she said, was “so different, you can’t compare it to anything else. In the future, I want to experience that feeling as much as I possibly can.”

SOURCE: Half Moon Bay Review

Walking, a natural capability of most people, is becoming an unrealized hope for those with disabled legs. For many years, I was unable to use my arms while walking because I was dependent upon two canes. This made me uncomfortable and caused me embarrassment while walking with other people, who are at a loss about how to help.

A red wheelchair, as a special birthday gift, came into my life in May, 2006. At first, I was bashful and was not used to sitting in the wheelchair while being pushed by my husband. But then I was wild with a joy that I have never felt – I can shop with my husband on city streets and shopping malls while sitting in the wheelchair, I can do everything more efficiently, and I am not worried about the danger of slipping and falling anymore.

In June, 2007, the wheelchair gave me an unprecedented and unforgettable experience as I sat in the wheelchair and rolled onto the Liaoning Theater’s stage to participate in the performance of the closing song at a televised charity event.

In January, 2008, I was honored to be a deputy to the Provincial People’s Congress. Sitting in the red wheelchair, I attended the 11th Liaoning Provincial People’s Congress and was the only disabled deputy. This fact received major attention from the media. I also received much goodwill from others attending.

In August, 2008, sitting in the wheelchair, I traveled to Beijing by train to the Olympics Center and the Beijing National Stadium to watch the Paralympics Games with friends from all over the world. This fantastic experience will forever be my most precious memory!

In my regular life, I do housework in my wheelchair and walk my beloved dog in the morning. My dog pulls the wheelchair along as he runs!