Taking a Behring on Immobility Putting Wheels Under the World’s Most Needy People June 2006

by Ken Behring
Photos by Russell Byrne & Ken Behring

I’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars. I’ve built cities and owned everything that a person could desire. However, nothing brought me any real satisfaction until I learned to give of myself in service to suffering men and women. By reaching out a hand to some of the world’s most needy people, I finally discovered a purpose that had nothing to do with money, birthright, luck, or popularity.

This discovery has everything to do with finding and sustaining joy. I learned that the simple act of giving a wheelchair to a disabled person could open my heart to the sunshine.

I will never forget when I lifted a small Vietnamese girl from the ground and placed her in her own wheelchair. She had been fearful and crying. However, she put her hands on the wheels and moved the chair a little forward and backward. In that instant I saw hope flash into her eyes as she suddenly saw a freedom that she could never have imagined. The smile that swept over her face was as bright as the noontime sun.

I understood the enormous change that had come to that little girl, but the experience changed me even more than it changed her. The act of helping another person brought me a sense of fulfillment and actual joy that all the millions of dollars I had earned, together with my professional football team, properties, boats, airplanes, big game hunting expeditions, and enough classic cars to start my own museum, had never been able to provide.

Disabled people in third world countries are often dumped on a few rags and left in lonely isolation. In some of these countries a stigma is associated with being handicapped that we in the West can hardly understand. But if you put one of these people in a wheelchair then everything changes. Their new mobility opens doorways of possibilities that were closed tight as long as they were unable to move about. It is an amazing experience to be an agent in bringing about that kind of wonderful change.

We aren’t neglecting our own country. For example, we committed almost 3,000 wheelchairs for victims of last year’s Gulf storms.

From the Beginning
I’m not bright enough to figure out anything like the Wheelchair Foundation on my own. Like a lot of important things in this world, the Foundation came about through a series of apparently random coincidences. I sold the Seattle Seahawks football team and was trying to do some good in this world by distributing relief and medical supplies to Africa and other third world countries.

The wheelchair project itself began when I received a call from a church organization who asked me to deliver 15 tons of canned meat to a group of needy people. I had room to spare in my plane so a request came for me to deliver six wheelchairs to Eastern Europe.

I had the experience of putting an elderly Rumanian man into a wheelchair. He had lost his health through a stroke and lost his wife through death. Something clicked in my brain when I lifted that poor man into his new chair. He burst into tears and said, “Now I will be able to go out in my yard and smoke with my neighbors.”

As with the Vietnamese girl, I was deeply moved by the man’s joy. I hadn’t realized that disabilities were able to deny people the smallest pleasures. I had performed a simple act that had the effect of transforming the man from helpless inertia and uselessness to mobility and usefulness. I had given him the gift of a new life. In the process I had discovered the purpose for my own life.

I learned how vast the worldwide need for wheelchairs is and established the Wheelchair Foundation with a goal of raising 150 million dollars in five years in order to distribute a million wheelchairs. To jumpstart the project, I donated the first 15 million dollars myself. Within two weeks we had received requests for 160,000 wheelchairs from non-governmental organizations.

We subsequently partnered with LDS Charities and Rotary International to deliver wheelchairs throughout the world. Rotary has delivered more than 100,000 wheelchairs to more than 44 countries. To date, the Wheelchair Foundation itself has delivered 500,000 wheelchairs into 144 different countries, and the number is growing.

We’ve learned that every wheelchair touches many people beyond the single disabled recipient. We estimate that each wheelchair improves the quality of life for at least 10 other people including parents, siblings, friends, and caregivers.

Some of the greatest outcomes of giving wheelchairs to the world might never be measured. One little girl wept when we gave her a wheelchair. “I have a dream,” she said. “I want to study very hard, and when I grow up I want to do the same kind of things for other disabled people as Mr. Behring has done for me. This wheelchair is a beam of sunshine that warms my heart, and I want to share the sunshine with many people.”

And then she really touched my heart when she added, “All children like me can help themselves by believing in our abilities, not our disabilities.”

Changing the World One Wheelchair at a Time
There are a lot of rewards in this service. I discovered with my first wheelchair the principle that providing the gift of mobility to a handicapped person blesses both the giver and the receiver alike. Seeing the smiles on recipients’ faces and on the faces of family members is always a beautiful thing.

One little girl in China, for example, told us, “Now I can go to the library and to school.” And then she gave us a wonderful formula: “A disabled person + a wheelchair = a whole person.”

A man in Nepal sat beaming in his new wheelchair and told us, “You are not a man when you are on your stomach trying to look up. Now I’m in this wheelchair, and now I am a man.”

One recipient in China wrote, “Sitting in your wheelchair I seem to grow wings. By wheelchair I go to the library to find more information I never knew before. By wheelchair I visit some translation service to get chances for supporting my life. By wheelchair I spend some of my spare time in parks to enjoy fresh air and beautiful sights.” And then he concluded by writing, “Thousand and thousands of words just come into one. ‘Thanks.’”

Sometimes it takes a little while for the enormity of the change to sink into the heart of the recipients. We gave a chair to a 20 year old woman in Botswana who had crawled to us on hands and knees with a piece of leather strapped around her knees and lower body. I will never forget how she looked at me with lifeless eyes; the woman had given up hope.

However, not long afterwards the local people took me on a tour of a sewing shop. Inside the shop somebody waved to me. It was the young woman. She wheeled the chair up to me, her face beaming with joy. She had discovered that she could make a living by making clothes. She had come to realize that, along with the wheelchair, we had given her a new life.

An elderly lady in Vietnam came to thank me for her wheelchair. She told me that because of her immobility, she had wanted to die but had not been able to. Then she took my hands, smiled at me, and said, “But now I don’t want to.”

People come to us for their wheelchairs in pushcarts, carried by relatives, sliding on their bottoms, and crawling on their stomachs. In Zimbabwe a man carried a woman for two days and two nights to get a wheelchair. We learned that the woman was not the man’s wife, girlfriend, or relative. “Why did you carry her all that way?” we asked.

“She asked me to,” he said. “And now look at her. She’s so happy. It was worth the trip.” The man obviously had the same kind of attitude about this sort of thing as we do ourselves.

An Ethiopian woman arrived at a distribution point. She was covered with blood from her waist down from traveling on her knees. She had heard about the distribution and crawled for nine hours on hands and knees in order to get a chair. When we washed the blood off of her and lifted her into the wheelchair, she grabbed my arms and held me as she prayed with a smile of thanksgiving on her face.

We made a wheelchair distribution in South Africa using the home of Nelson Mandela as the distribution center. I watched as that great man planted a gentle kiss on the forehead of each child who received one of the wheelchairs. At a press conference following the distribution, Mr. Mandela said, “Mr. Behring came because he wanted to, with no strings attached. He came on his own and gave without asking for anything in return. This is a sign of true friendship for the people of South Africa.”

On one of our trips to South Africa we met a young lady who told us, “Two years ago you were here giving away wheelchairs and I was not lucky enough to get one.” She added, “Every day and night for two years I have prayed to God that He would bring you back with a wheelchair for me. Today God has answered my prayers.” Then she added, “And today is my birthday.”

A Free Gift of Life
The recipients never pay a dime for their chair. As we give it to them we shake their hands sometimes and say, “You can’t give us anything for this. All we want is a smile.” And we could melt an iceberg with the brilliant smiles that we’ve gotten in return. But, even though they are smiling, they all have tears running down their faces as they realize the enormity of the change that is being brought into their lives. Even when we can’t understand their language they tell us with their eyes what the gift means to them.

One of our first recipients crawled 12 miles on his elbows to come to the distribution point. He used his wheelchair for a half hour or so, wheeling around and around the enclosure. Then he pulled himself out and sat back on the ground. “Why did you get out of your wheelchair?” we asked.

“I’ve had my turn,” he said. “Twenty years ago, I had a turn in a wheelchair too. That is why I came here today, so that I could get another turn.”

I was shocked and told him, “No, this is your wheelchair.” “I have no money,” he said. “You cannot buy this,” we said, “it is a gift for you.”

The man was nearly overwhelmed by the gift he was receiving. A year later we were back in the same area for another distribution and the same man showed up surrounded by small children.

“I came back 12 miles,” he said, “because I want to show you that the wheelchair is just like new, and my children wanted to come and thank you for what you have done for us.”

I think that in some cases recipients are as overwhelmed by the knowledge that there are people in the world who care about them as they are by the wheelchair that they are being given. For example, we gave Xie Yonhong in China a wheelchair in 2003 and two years later he wrote a letter saying that in part because we believed in him enough to give him a wheelchair, he ended up swimming the English Channel even though paralyzed from the waist down.

Because of the convenience as well as the need, we’re constantly taking chairs into Mexico. We’re currently scheduled to take 13 thousand wheelchairs into that country.

Our chairs are produced in China and many of them never leave the country. We have distributed more than 100,000 wheelchairs in China since 2001. We recently traveled to a large island in China where we handed out 2,000 chairs in a single distribution, which more than doubled our previous record. In China alone we have partnerships in 44 cities for 57,000 chairs.

We are doing more than just providing mobility to some of the people in China. We are also providing them with a profession. Unsafe drinking water is one of the terrible problems in third world countries so we have been distributing water purification machines. Now we are partnering with some wheelchair recipients to run the water machines that we are providing. The water machines are fairly complicated but they can be serviced from a wheelchair. We provide training so that some of the wheelchair bound people can service the water machines, giving them a new profession.

Challenge, Progress, and Plans
We’re just scratching the surface. A million wheelchairs seems like a lot, but the China Disabled Persons’ Federation estimates that there are 8.8 million disabled people in China alone. Other estimates move that figure above 35 million. Most of them are far too poor to buy the wheelchair that would change their lives. The prime minister of India told me that there are 114 million disabled people in that mighty nation.

The need for providing mobility for people is growing every day. Not just because of population growth, but because of the phenomenon of the vastly increasing numbers of aging people. One expert told me that by 2050 China, all by itself, will have more than 80 million people over the age of 80.

I’ve played the role of both coach and player on the Wheelchair Foundation team. A great number of people are working together to grow and sustain the effort. It doesn’t seem fair, but I’m getting older at the same time that the Wheelchair Foundation project gets bigger.

Fortunately, we have a great team in place with a lot of dedication by people like Pete Petrovich, Matt Beinke, David, Jeff, and Tom Behring, and the members of the committee. We intend to keep the project going. This is too big and too good to ever stop. The real legacy that I hope to leave is to get more people helping others, so that after I’m gone the work I’ve done will continue to multiply. I’m constantly learning about new areas of need and new opportunities to improve the lives of people less fortunate.

We tell people that a 75 dollar donation will result in a wheelchair being delivered to a needy person. Unlike some charitable organizations, every penny of the 75 dollars goes into making and delivering the wheelchair. The fact is, however, that the per unit cost to the foundation of each delivered chair is almost twice that amount. We finance the extra costs from other sources, such as the Drive Fore Mobility Golf Tournament that we put on in Brentwood every year. All the proceeds go to the foundation.

The Drive Fore Mobility Golf Tournament provides a way for people to do something good with their money while having a lot of fun. It’s all first class! Everybody I’ve talked to calls our Drive Fore Mobility the greatest golf tournament they ever participated in. We provide food, drink, and fun for all the participants. This year’s tournament will be held on Monday, August 14.

Do yourself a favor and get in on this great experience. At the same time you will do the world a good turn by helping put wheels under some of the world’s most needy people. Last year the Drive Fore Mobility wrote a check to the Wheelchair Foundation for more than $300,000.

One day we gave a wheelchair to a man who told us, “Now I will be able to be useful. I will be able to work.” And then he added something that brought tears to my eyes at the same time that it brought joy to my heart, “Having a wheelchair is the beginning of a new life.”

Making this kind of intervention in the lives of desperate people all over the world has given meaning, purpose, and joy to my life! Come help us and see for yourself!

Call 925-634-1203 to learn more about the Brentwood Drive Fore Mobility Golf Tournament. See www.wheelchairfoundation.org to learn more about the Wheelchair Foundation itself.