Restoring Dignity: RC Kilifi Wheelchair Project

By Rotarian Mercy Kariuki: RC Kilifi

Imagine crawling for 32 years because you are physically challenged and your family can’t afford to buy a wheelchair. Imagine being a single dad to a perfectly “normal” child and at the age of twelve, he develops a condition that leads to paralysis. You work as a security guard. Your salary is not enough to cater for your other children and get your physically challenged child a wheelchair.

These are just two of the most touching stories we heard last month as our club the Rotary Club of Kilifi held a wheelchair donation ceremony. After 32 years, the lady finally got a wheelchair and immediately she sat on it, she felt dizzy because she’s never experienced such a height before (Oh the things we take for granted). Her mother was so overjoyed that she would finally have it easier moving her child from one place to another.

Rotary is about touching people’s lives, one person at a time. Rotary is about coming together to give back to humanity because we know how it feels to lack. Rotary is about sharing the little we have because we know the little we give goes a mighty long way for a needy person.  

In partnerships with Safari Seats, RC Kilifi donated ten wheelchairs to some of the physically challenged people in our community. We barely scratched the surface because the need for wheelchairs in Kilifi county is unfathomable. We still have many physically challenged people around Kilifi county and we want to help them get wheelchairs.

This is an appeal to any person or organization to donate a wheelchair or link us up with someone who can donate or partner with us to touch our physically challenged community’s lives because our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.

This is our one love story.

Rotary Club of Kilifi