From @FWMission ... Friday Story: "Independence for Education"

Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair Mission is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing nations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, FWM works around the world in partnership with a vast network of humanitarian, faith-based and government organizations, sending wheelchairs to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, providing not only the gift of mobility, but of dignity, independence, and hope.

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Friday Story: "Independence for Education"

Greetings and happy Friday!

This week we have 20 sea-going containers filled with wheelchairs en-route to 11 different countries around the globe. One of those containers contains 550 GEN_2 wheelchairs destined to provide independence, hope and mobility to individuals living in El Salvador. This week’s story was provided by FWM staff member, Ariel, from a distribution trip she took a few months back:

After driving through a hilly area with lots of vegetation, we parked our vehicles at the bottom of a steep set of stairs. We were told a young man at the top was to receive a wheelchair. Our group made it to the top and were greeted by Jonathan, 16 years old, who is paralyzed from the waist down from an unknown birth defect. One of five children, Jonathan has to be carried down the steep stairs and several miles to school every day by his mother, who holds him on her hip like a small child. As a good student and eager to learn, Jonathan was proud to show us his school workbooks, displaying meticulously neat penmanship.

This new wheelchair brings mobility and independence ...

• read the rest of this story ...

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Want to take one of these wheelchairs  for a test drive? During normal business hours, visit the lobby at the Texas Street entrance of First Presbyterian Church-Midland, at the northwest corner of Texas and A streets, on the west side of downtown Midland. You can give the gift of mobility. The cost of $72.00 is a bargain to us ... but it is a life-changing gift to impoverished and disabled recipients ... and there are times when your contribution will be matched, reaching not one - but TWO, and sometimes FOUR recipients. Please note on your check "Wheelchair Gift."