Heather Bell
Mary Alice Barksdale, of the Radford Noon Rotary Club, and two members of the Blacksburg Rotary Club recently returned from a trip to Ecuador to distribute life-changing wheelchairs.
“Rotary Districts 7570 and 7360 collaborated with the Wheelchair Foundation and Rotary Clubs in Guayaquil and Cuenca to provide 270 wheelchairs to those in need,” said Barksdale. “I’ve been profoundly impacted by my involvement in this project and feel that I no longer wish to go on vacations to see parts of the country and the world that I haven’t seen simply for the pleasure of seeing them. I only want to go on “vacations” in which there is some type of giving back mission. Seeing places is great and I’ve seen much of the world. If I’m going to see more places, I want to see them in combination with helping others. I had no idea of the desperate need for wheelchairs worldwide before becoming involved.”
Barksdale explained Rotary Districts 7570 and 7610 collect the funding for half of one container of wheelchairs (about 265-270).
“We send the funds to the Wheelchair Foundation, who matches what we have contributed,” she said. “The Wheelchair Foundation orders the container of wheelchairs to be made in China. The container is shipped directly to the country where the chairs will be distributed, so we avoid entry fees in the US and then the country we are going to.”
Barksdale said Rotary Clubs in the country they are visiting make the arrangements to collect and store the wheelchairs and members of those clubs identify people in the community who are most in need of new wheelchairs.
“When we arrive, we pay our own hotels and meals, otherwise, we could not give out so many wheelchairs,” she said. “The clubs in the target country really want representatives from the US clubs to come and be involved in distributions, in part because it makes the gift of a wheelchair more highly valued than an unknown giver from a US organization.”
Barksdale said the day after their arrival, they begin traveling to locations and distributing the wheelchairs to the people that have been identified as needing them. She said the need is overwhelming.
“We have had hundreds of children brought in who have been carried every moment of their lives by parents and other family members, people who have lived their lives on crutches or with canes, people in modified strollers and office chairs, and some people arrive in wheelchairs that are decrepit, held together with duct tape,” she said. “For about seven days, we travel to locations by bus and distribute wheelchairs.”
This was Barksdale’s second trip to distribute wheelchairs, and another may be planned for this fall.
“Last year, we were in Jamaica, this spring Ecuador, in the fall there will be a trip to Bolivia if enough funding is there,” she said. “They are planned one at a time, always a collaboration between Rotarians in Districts 7570 and 7360, the Rotary Clubs in the country we will visit, and the Wheelchair Association.
Barksdale, who has been a Rotary Club member since 2009, was not the only New River Valley resident to go on the trip. Christy Brown and 90-year-old Walter Pirie, both members of the Blacksburg Rotary Club, also participated in the trip and have been involved with the effort for the past two years.
Barksdale said she has a lot of personal reasons to help people receive the wheelchairs they need. “Grandmother Barksdale in Gary, West Virginia lost her right leg to bone cancer at age 16,” said Barksdale. “She lived her life on crutches until she was finally able to get a wheelchair at age 65. Wheelchairs weren’t affordable and weren’t covered by health insurance programs for coal miners’ families.”
“Grandmother St. Clair spent much of her final 20 years in wheelchairs, living to age 96,” she continued. “My mother had her right leg amputated and lived her final years in wheelchairs. She was lucky enough to get a rechargeable motorized one that my brother found on Craig’s list. An electronic wheelchair wasn’t covered for mom by Medicare.”
Barksdale said he travels have also taken her to places where the need for wheelchairs is great.
“[I’ve had’ many years of observing survivors of polio in Malawi, who spent their lives crawling because their legs couldn’t support their trunks,” she said. “I never saw a single wheelchair in Malawi. Many hospitals and clinics didn’t have doctors available on a regular basis.”
“Also, during a Fulbright Scholar opportunity in South Africa, I saw many people in the townships, including children, who were carried everywhere they went in their lives,” she added. “These children didn’t go to school because classrooms had 40 or more students with one teacher, and there was no one who could provide support for children who needed to be carried.”
To make a donation to the effort, log on to https://fundraise.wheelchairfoundation.org/give/504194/#!/donation/checkout.
