Free Wheelchair Mission® THIRTY YEARS AGO, the sight of a crippled Moroccan woman crawling across a dirt road planted a seed that germinated in 1999 when Don Schoendorfer, founder of Free Wheelchair Mission, invested his education and professional expertise as a PhD Mechanical Engineer to create a simple, rugged, and inexpensive wheelchair. The mental picture of the crawling woman's anguish and loss of dignity had haunted him for years until God opened a path for Dr. Schoendorfer. In wealthy countries, a disabled person can get a wheelchair, however, there are over 100,000,000 disabled adults and children for whom the dream of a wheelchair is worlds beyond their expectations. They live without this basic form of mobility by crawling through life or waiting for a loved one to carry them to fulfill the simplest of needs--the disabled and the family members are thereby restricted from a full life. The Free Wheelchair Mission is a faith-based, non-profit organization based in Irvine, California. Its mission is to 'Transform lives through the gift of mobility to the physically disabled poor in developing countries as motivated by Jesus Christ.' Its vision is to 'Creatively partner with like-minded international humanitarian and indigenous organizations to place 20 million wheelchairs.' The Free Wheelchair Mission provides wheelchairs at no cost to the disabled in the developing world. It has contracted with manufacturers in China to produce a basic but sturdy wheelchair using widely available parts. The wheelchair is designed to be shipped efficiently and assembled easily. The average cost to manufacture, ship, and distribute one of its chairs for $52, an extraordinarily modest investment that changes the lives of the disabled and their families. FREE WHEELCHAIR MISSION WEBSITE