Greetings and Happy Friday!

March 3 , 2006

Here are some highlights for the week:

  • Next Thursday, March 9, at 6:00 PM we have our Women Advocating Mobility (WAM) event at the Center Club in Costa Mesa, CA.  Colonel Randy Hart will share his experiences distributing our wheelchairs to the poorest of the poor in Iraq.  There is still time to make a reservation.
  • A container of 550 wheelchairs arrived in Ghana.
  • Four containers left for India and two for Vietnam
This story comes from the Fiji Times.  Our local hero Susan saw our wheelchair one rainy Saturday night three years ago at Mariners Church.  The next morning she came back and told me her dream.  She started raising funds from everyone she met.  A few months later we shipped to Fiji, the first of many containers she has funded.  She went on national TV there and promised to provide a wheelchair to every poor Fijian who needs one!

Disabled woman receives wheels

Thursday, February 23, 2006
Suan and Milika

PENI Bola was beside himself yesterday when his niece Milika Kanaqele was given a wheelchair. It was a special moment at Lalati Village in Beqa.  Milika, 22, has been handicapped since childhood until yesterday when Susan Shaw of California gave her a wheelchair.  She had been crawling around the village since birth.  Mr. Bola said her niece had never left the village but the wheelchair would enable relatives to push her around the village.

"The last time she left the village was when she was small, when she could be carried."

"I decided I would do something for a country and chose Fiji because the people are kind and always willing to help," said Ms Shaw.

Susan said Doug Salisbury and Barry Watkins matched money she collected with his own money and paid for this container for  Fiji and another one to Tonga.

 

Doug Salisbury and Susan Shaw