Don and Laurie Schoendorfer were vacationing in Morocco when they witnessed the plight of a disabled woman struggling to drag herself across a dirt road. Ignored by the crowds and barely evading traffic, the woman’s hardship was a scene the couple would be unable to forget upon their return to life in southern California.
The average wheelchair costs thousands of dollars to design, manufacture and deliver. Within the US the cost is already prohibitive; imagine what it costs to ship overseas, especially to the so-called developing countries or those countries where poverty is paramount.
A mechanical engineer and inventor by trade, Don was a Columbia University graduate with a Ph.D. from MIT, working in the biomedical field and responsible for a string of over 50 U.S. patents. Don began researching the global dilemma of disability in developing countries; soon thereafter, he started tinkering in the basement, developed a durable, safe, inexpensive wheelchair, and eventually walked away from a successful career to found the nonprofit organization Free Wheelchair Mission.
The result is a fully functional, rugged wheelchair that costs $59 to manufacture!
For more information about the Free Wheelchair Mission visit their web site at FreeWheelChairMission.org
October 2009 Distribution to China from Free Wheelchair Mission on Vimeo.
1,100 wheelchairs were assembled. Watch two of the Chinese volunteers assemble a wheelchair in 3 minutes!
