Wheelchair Ministry
Walkers and Braces Too
Our Miraculous Wheelchair Workshop
Chairs are expensive, with some costing as much as $5,000 new. Braces and walkers are expensive too. For this reason chairs, braces and walkers and their parts are treasured, stored and reused. His Wings Ranch provides chairs free of charge but to do so required creating an entire wheelchair, brace and walker workshop and warehouse to store and organize the donated and purchased parts to have a chance at meeting the kids diverse needs.
Yoshira lives with Sue and Johnny (below) on the ranch and fixes wheelchairs among her many other duties.
It is a daunting challenge normally accomplished with a highly funded and specialized department at a hospital. At His Wings Ranch Sue and Johnny do the work on a shoe string budget. If you are looking for a worthy cause where you can directly assist a child with basic mobility needs, partnering with His Wings Ranch is a fruitful way to leverage your financial support with volunteer ranch mechanics to put a smile on the face of a child on wheels.
Dave visited the ranch. Dave is a professional Wheelchair Adaptive Equipment Specialist who not only brought 3 wheelchairs with him on his visit but through his expertise was able to modify a dozen more. His expertise in combining parts from different chairs resulted in new functioning chairs for 15 kids. Thanks Dave!
Adan was one of the beneficiaries. He needed a new set of “wheelie bars” so he could nimbly lean back and spin around in his chair because that’s what you do to explore your world as a teenage boy. Adam was ecstatic!
Our Accessible Paths and Ramps
Although the ranch has no paved roads leading to it, when you arrive on campus you will be greeted by new concrete paths allowing kids to reach all 5 buildings and the horse ranch. They allow some of our more challenged children to move independently from building to building. This is especially helpful for kids with walkers and braces who will no longer have to push themselves through the dirt. An additional bonus is that they that keep our newly remodeled portable classrooms clean!
Behold the custom hand built ramp abutting the concrete paths. It may not look like much but it took a group of craftsmen put together and paint the ramp then another to lay down the concrete path to butt up against it properly. Now the kids can access the building on their own.
The concrete paths reach all the way down to the horse corral allowing kids in chairs to roll right up to the horses they ride for their therapy.
Braces
A huge variety of leg brace options and sizes are required to meet the needs of the growing and healing kids on the ranch learning to walk. Every child has a different support need as well as brace size to support their legs. To make things more challenging even after we set them up with the perfect brace the kids grow out them requiring a bigger size of the same brace. With dozens of kids using these services it’s easy to see why it’s necessary to have an even wider selection. His Wings also provides braces and walkers each custom sized to fit the limbs of a growing and healing child as well as therapeutic walkers to help kids regain their strength and mobility.
Lucky for us pediatric physical therapist Annie was available to give a workshop to the His Wings staff on how to select, customize and fit braces so that our staff can provide the maximum therapeutic benefit for the kids in need. We are blessed when specialists visit the ranch to properly fit the braces and teach the staff how to do the same.
Yolanda is walking thanks to the braces from His Wings.
Walkers
Kids at the ranch like Kimberly needing to develop leg strength and coordination benefit from customize walkers to help them walk on their own. His Wings provides therapeutic walkers to help kids regain their strength and mobility.
Luis uses a walker while he waits for spinal surgery to improve his mobility.
Nicole uses a walker after receiving surgery to straighten her legs so she can begin to walk.
Lend a Hand!
Sometimes kids draw the short straw when it comes to health and mobility. Your donation goes a long way in providing basic mobility for a child who was born with physical challenges. Sometimes all it takes is a smaller seat or part to transform a donated chair or cycle into a life changing experience for a child. If you’ve been looking for a way to partner with a small and lean organization that helps kids directly, you’ve found it with His Wings Ranch. We would love to partner with you!
