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Sunday, July 1, 2007

1 wheelchair = 2 iPhones

The other day a friend of mine came over to help me out with my scooter. He brought along his fiancee. They were telling me how they were both going to get iPhones and the iPhone does sound pretty cool. In fact we were talking about its features for a bit.

As we were talking, I mentioned to them what I do online and how I sometimes get requests from families of kids as well as adults with disabilities who don't have money for wheelchairs. This week I had three requests and I was scrambling around to find places to help them out. Two of the requests were urgent.

Most of the time people need ultralightweight manual wheelchairs to get in and out of their cars and houses. My friend asked me how much one of those wheelchairs costs and I said if you shop around and don't get extras, I've been able to find a new GPV for a few people for about a thousand dollars - so that was the "about" figure I gave them.

Both of them looked at each other but didn't say a word. Today I received an email. It read:

"1 wheelchair = 2 iPhones

Rachel and I decided that as cool as it would be to be the first kids on the block with an iPhone, it would be a lot cooler for some kid to go down the block in a wheelchair. So we donated the money for our 2 iPhones to a charity that provides wheelchairs. We spent the time we would have waited in line doing much more enjoyable things, believe me.

Thank you for putting things in perspective."

Thank you , my dear friends.


If you would like to donate toward a wheelchair for someone, please consider one of these organizations-

Alternatives in Motion
alternativesinmotion.org


Free Wheelchair Mission
freewheelchairmission.org


LifeNets - The Wheelchair Project
lifenets.org

The Mobility Project
mobilityproject.org

Special Kids Fund
specialkidsfund.org

Wheels for Humanity
wheelsforhumanity.org

Wheelchair Foundation
wheelchairfoundation.org

7 comments:

Wheelchair Dancer said...

Ruth,

I'm linking to this (prolly tomorrow).

WCD

Anonymous said...

That is very cool.

Julie R.

Anonymous said...

fantastic use of cash!

http://pittrehab.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth McClung said...

great story - way to make a difference for all three people.

Anonymous said...

Way cool!!
So often, people just don't know, do they?
Janet

Ruth said...

thanks for your comments, everyone - and thank you for the link WD...

seahorse said...

Hey Ruth this really grabbed my attention at Ouch! where Goldfish brought the link to my attention. I posted on the whole iPhone, giving to charity thing. Yes, why not just give to the charity and do something less boring than queue. Brilliant!