Right at Home Partners With Free Wheelchair Mission

Right at Home has partnered with The  Free Wheelchair Mission, a humanitarian, faith-based, non-profit organization to raise funds in order to provide free wheelchairs to those in need in developing countries.

 

As a franchisee, Owner of Right at Home of Central New Jersey, I was honored to have been provided the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica in October (along with 9 other Right at Home franchise owners in the United States and Canada) to go on a Vision Trip to represent Right at Home in assembling and delivering free wheelchairs to the residents of Costa Rica who needed them. We built 62 wheelchairs and delivered several each day.

This mission was not only important to the people who received wheelchairs but to my fellow Right at Home franchise owners and employees who worked so hard to assemble and deliver the wheelchairs. I’d like to focus on not only the gratitude of the recipients but the graciousness of the other Right at Home participants I had the pleasure of getting to know on this trip. Right at Home has some truly fabulous people in the system I am so fortunate to be a part of.

For example, Denton from the Right at Home Corporate Office lifted a woman from her chair to the newly assembled wheelchair and this brought tears to her eyes to see his gentle and giving nature shine through. 

I must also single out Valerie, the Director of Nursing from the Right at Home Cincinnati office, who hugged and held on to one of the wheelchair recipients who had dementia. The recipient didn’t want to let go of Valerie and Valerie held on just as tightly Valerie was so overwhelmed and touched by that moment that she came away sobbing.   

In addition to assembling and delivering the wheelchairs, I handed out stickers to the young children that came running over to see us while Phil from the Right at Home office in Virginia gave these children small toys and gave one boy in particular a soccer ball! Their faces were lit up with smiles of joy and they were ecstatic – our small gestures meant so much to them and brought such happiness to their lives.

Our first wheelchair recipient was a young girl who was accompanied by her mom at the office where we worked from. It was the emotions of her mom that broke my heart. Her mom was crying as her daughter sat in her wheelchair. I truly felt that mother’s her pain (at what her daughter had gone through) and joy (that her daughter now had a wheelchair to call her own). As a mom myself who has been blessed with 3 healthy children, I beyond doubt related to this woman on a Mom to Mom basis.

That week in Costa Rica building and delivering these wheelchairs has changed Beth’s life. The experience teaches us to be grateful for what we have and to try and pay it forward whenever possible. Beth will always be grateful for having been selected to participate in this program and hopes that you will continue to monetarily support Right at Home’s Free Wheelchair Mission, so we can continue to provide this needed and so appreciated gift of mobility to those who truly need it.