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Haiti 2018

In June 2018, we headed to Haiti to distribute 163 paediatric wheelchairs. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and has recently experienced massive political and social upheaval, with riots and violence leaving the country in distress. It is home to some of the world’s most underprivileged children.

We visited the capital, Port-au-Prince, and the biggest city in the north, Cap Haitien, where we worked with multiple partners including BSEIPH, Partners in Health, and Hope Health Action, to provide chairs for children in desperate need. Our team encountered a number of very complex cases of disabled kids with severe deformities, as a result of spending their whole lives without a wheelchair. That said, the fortnight was filled with smiles and was a great success, with this quote from one of our local partners particularly sticking in our minds:

“Today’s experience was so amazing for all of us. The parents talked about it the whole way home. They felt welcomed and they saw their kids were valued by all of you. A lot of these chairs are true game changers for the kids.”

 

Haiti 2014

100 wheelchairs are now making their way to Haiti, just in time for Christmas, as part of Walkabout’s ongoing commitment to change more lives and help the country recover from the devastating earthquake back in 2010.

This directly follows on from another very successful distribution of 300 wheelchairs in November, bringing the total number of chairs sent to Haiti this year to 720. The Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe, has been taking a really hands-on approach, helping our trained volunteers to build and individually fit the wheelchairs, and we witnessed first-hand evidence of yet more people for whom chairs have changed lives.

One person whose life was transformed by her custom-fitted Walkabout chair is 17-year-old Iclide Simeon, from Jacmel in southern Haiti, who lost the use of her legs after she was shot in September 2013. Iclide was beginning to develop a postural deformity in her spine owing to an ill-fitting wheelchair from which she repeatedly fell. Now, thanks to her new Rough Rider chair, Iclide can comfortably and independently receive the physical rehabilitation, psychosocial support and vocational skills training she needs to prepare her for reintegration into the community.

Another Rough Rider recipient for whom life is much less of a struggle is 31-year-old Zephyrin Chrism, who became paraplegic after falling from a tree in April of this year. Zephyrin was experiencing extreme discomfort from using a wheelchair that was too small from him, but is now very happy and his new chair he received in October is his pride and joy.

We would like to say a huge thank you to our local partner in Haiti, BSEIPH, and in particular to David Charles and Gerald Oriol for all their hard work. And we would also like to thank all of you who have supported our endeavour in Haiti through your generous donations. So far these have enabled us to distribute 2,300 of the 10,000 chairs we originally pledged. If you would like to change more lives like these by making a contribution to this programme, or to a project in any of the other countries to which we distribute, just follow the tab above to our “donate” page and give whatever you can.

Fritzner’s story

Haiti 2014

Team Walkabout recently travelled to Haiti, the country where we first donated wheelchairs after the devastating earthquake in 2010. Monica Gonzalez-Bunster and Director of Programs Stefanie Haigh took a trip to Port-au-Prince, Fond des Blancs, Cap-Haitien and Central Plateau to meet some of the individuals whose lives have been changed by the donation of a Walkabout wheelchair.

They were told many inspiring stories of previous recipients who have now started a new career, hobby or life as a Walkabout wheelchair user. For example, Eugene Fritzner (pictured above with Monica) is now a prominent wheelchair athlete! The team also spent some time visiting our partners, BSEIPH (the Secretary of State’s Office for Persons with Disability), to talk about our ongoing pledge to donate 10,000 wheelchairs to Haiti, as well as talking to customs officials to ensure a smooth donation arrivals process into the country.

All in all, it was a very successful trip. Thank you to everyone who has donated to Walkabout since the beginning. Your money has enabled us to change thousands of lives and make a huge impact on a country that desperately needed help.

Haiti 2013 with Greenwich Country Day School

Haiti 2013

On April 15th 2013, Walkabout Foundation and a group from Greenwich Country Day School (GCDS) travelled to Haiti to individually distribute dozens of RoughRider wheelchairs to adults and kids in need all across the country.

After GCDS hosted a walkathon at its campus this past October and raised $47,000, the equivalent of 156 wheelchairs, GCDS mothers Magdalena Miguens and Nancie Forrest, teacher and head of Community Service, Jen Donnalley, Saurel Edouard, and headmaster Adam Rohdie and his wife Alisa, all travelled with Carolina and Monica Gonzalez-Bunster to Haiti to build and distribute many of the wheelchairs the GCDS students fundraised for.

The team travelled all across Haiti over 5 days, starting with a visit to St Boniface in Fond des Blanes where Adam Rohdie played basketball with some of Walkabout’s previous wheelchair recipients, followed by a stop in Les Cayes where they went from house to house donating chairs, followed by a trip to Haiti Hospital Appeal in Cap Haitian where they met Fabien, a little girl who was born with Spina bifida and had a pressure soar caused by dragging herself on the floor, to a stop at FONHARE in Quanaminthe where 30 people were eagerly awaiting their new chairs, and ending the trip in Carrefour at Hospital Adventiste d’Haiti where the team worked quickly to distribute more chairs before catching a flight back home. Each day posed a different challenge but could not have been more rewarding. That indescribable moment of seeing a person’s face light up as we personally help them gain their independence is priceless. And as Jen Donnalley so beautifully stated, “the squeals of joy will be a sound I will carry with me always.”

If your school would like to get involved and do something similar, we would love to hear from you! Please email info@walkaboutfoundation.org.

Leon’s story

When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, Leon Gaisli lost everything. His home was flattened, his wife and all eight of his children were killed and when he was pulled from the rubble, he was paralysed from the waist down. For Leon, his RoughRider wheelchair represented a means to regain his physical strength and sense of purpose in life. Two years later, not even Leon could have imagined where that chair would take him. In 2012, he became just one of three Haitians ever to represent his nation at the London Paralympics.

10,000 wheelchair pledge for Haiti

We are incredibly proud to announce that Walkabout has pledged to donate 10,000 wheelchairs to Haiti over the next five years.

On Wednesday, May 14th 2012, Walkabout Foundation was invited to attend a special ceremony and press conference in Port-au-Prince with Gerald Oriol, Haiti’s Secretary of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities, in order to publicly announce its commitment to donate 10,000 wheelchairs to Haitians with mobility disabilities throughout the country. The wheelchairs will be donated over the course of 5 years directly to Secretary Oriol’s Bureau for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities, which will then work with local organizations to ensure that the wheelchairs are distributed and delivered to the people that need them most. It is estimated that thousands of Haitians were physically injured by the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in addition to the thousands of Haitians that were already living with amputations and mobility disabilities within the country. Representatives from over 30 NGOs attended the ceremony and press conference, but the highlight of the event was a special visit by President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe who came to support our initiative and express their own personal commitment to focus on the plight of Haitians with disabilities and support our wheelchair donation.

Additionally, Walkabout Foundation sent a summer intern, Simon Morgan, who is pursuing a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University, to work alongside Secretary Oriol in Port-au-Prince to establish a strategic plan for the efficient and responsible distribution of the 10,000 chairs.

Haiti December 2010

On December 27, 2010, Carolina, her father Rolando, Philippe Chryssicopoulos, Daniele Benatoff and Maria Luz Porcella travelled to Haiti to donate 200 more wheelchairs to Partners in Health (Zanmi Beni) in Port-au-Prince.

The wheelchairs have been received by Partners in Health but will soon be distributed to people around the country. The Walkabout team spent the afternoon in Haiti visiting the children who live at Zanmi Beni and playing with the kids that Walkabout previously donated Rough Riders to in May 2010.

The Rough Rider wheelchairs are holding up great and everyone seems to love them. Word on the street is that they are the absolute best wheelchair to have!

Walkabout was also able to visit Project Medishare on December 27, 2010. Project Medishare was founded by Dr. Barth Green (head of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis) and is a non-profit organization based out of Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

Project Medishare is dedicated to sharing human and technical resources with its Haitian partners in the quest to achieve quality healthcare and development services for all.

Walkabout donated 50 Rough Rider wheelchairs to Project Medishare in May and went back to visit some of the patients on December 27th.

The feedback from the therapists is that the Rough Rider wheelchair is the most suitable wheelchair for the rough and rugged terrain of Haiti, and Walkabout has been asked by several organizations to send more Rough Riders down.

Project Medishare itself accommodates 15 spinal cord injured patients and is currently in the process of building a prosthetics centre within the clinic.

RoughRiders in Haiti 2010

Haiti May 2010

Walkabout Foundation travelled to Haiti on May 18, 2010 with 400 “rough rider” wheelchairs manufactured by the social enterprise, Whirlwind Wheelchair International, and was able to fit and adjust each spinal cord injured patient and amputee to his/her chair.

Walkabout donated the 400 chairs to Partners in Health and leveraged off of PIH’s infrastructure and network on the ground in Haiti to travel around the country and personally distribute wheelchairs to St. Boniface Hospital in Fond des Blancs, Haiti Hospital Appeals in Cap Haitien, Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Lambert Sante Clinic in Petion Ville, and Medishare in Port-au-Prince.

Walkabout reached out to those in need one by one and listened to their heart-breaking stories, stories of people’s ceilings and houses crashing down on them and being stuck paralyzed in the earthquake rubble for days.

Wheelchairs were donated to people with different injuries, and of all different ages, including a 10 year-old girl named Neftalie who lives with PIH in Port-au-Prince and a 45 year-old mother of five. Walkabout met a basketball player, a local hero, who had been paralyzed in the earthquake, and a 12 year-old boy, Vladimir, who was spinal cord injured when his bedroom’s ceiling fell on his neck.

We were able to bring back smiles to these individuals’ faces and hope to their lives by providing them with the wheelchairs that they so desperately needed.

Many of the individuals Walkabout met were bedridden prior to the wheelchair donation for lack of a pressure relief cushion and a wheelchair. Today, with their new all-terrain “rough rider” chair, these individuals can venture out again onto the unpaved roads of Haiti to start rebuilding their country and their own shattered lives. These individuals, who were hopeless and immobilized when we met them, have now regained their mobility, freedom, and independence.

Walkabout Foundation spent a week in Haiti and was represented there by Carolina Gonzalez Bunster, her parents Rolando and Monica, and her younger brother Diego, a rising sophomore at Georgetown University.

Walkabout in Haiti post-earthquake