Consider the words of Don Schoendorfer, President and CEO of the Free Wheelchair Mission: “I used to think that I would make sure my family was all settled then I would give back in a big way, now I know that thinking is wrong.” Who is Don you might ask? This is his story:
Don Schoendorfer is an unassuming suburban engineer from Irvine, California, who had an idea for a low-cost wheelchair and built one in his garage. He had been shaken by what he had seen on a trip to Morocco with his wife in the 1970s, where they encountered a disabled woman who was unable to walk, literally crawling across the street on all fours. She would be the first of thousands Don would notice around the world who had no hope of a standard wheelchair, which in the U.S. can cost up to $1,000. His idea was to build a cheap, easy-to-repair wheelchair out of Huffy bicycle tires and the standard-issue white plastic lawn chair. As of this writing, his experiment has lifted over 636,405 of the world’s poorest people from a life in the dirt to one of dignity.