Lessons from India enable disabled

Mohan Sudabattula was 10 years old when his parents took him on a trip to their family’s ancestral village in India in 2006.

Sudabattula’s mother took him to an orphanage and school for disabled children. Now 23, he vividly remembers that some of the children were missing limbs and used old lawn chairs with bicycle tires attached as wheelchairs. So in 2016, when he came up with an idea to help people in wheelchairs, he went all in.

Sudabattula was a volunteer measuring disabled children for prosthetics at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Salt Lake City. He noticed that the children frequently removed their prosthetics because they weren’t comfortable, and they also quickly outgrew them.

“Their parents would bring the prosthetics back, and the protocol was for us to throw them away,” he said. That seemed wasteful to Sudabattula. The unwanted prosthetics from Shriners couldn’t be reused because they were each designed to fit only one child. But the throwaway devices got Sudabattula thinking: What other mobility equipment could be rescued, cleaned up and given to somebody in need?

After doing some research, Sudabattula created Project Embrace from his dorm room. The non-profit collects gently used wheelchairs, walkers, canes, crutches, slings, orthotic shoes and braces and redistributes them to disabled children and adults who can’t afford them.

At first, Sudabattula and his friends scoured thrift stores. Then they started asking everyone they encountered whether they knew of anyone with a wheelchair or a walker that was no longer being used.

When word got out about the group’s efforts, Sudabattula and his friends set up a website, and the phone started ringing, not only with offers of donations from families, care centres and metal scrap yards, but also of help.

Recently, the group ventured with a full U-Haul to the Navajo Nation on the Utah-Arizona border, where there aren’t always enough wheelchairs, walkers and crutches for people who need them.

The donations go to Navajo families who sometimes drive more than 300 kilometres to see a physician, said Heather Balchinclowing, an independent living co-ordinator for Active Re-Entry who assists disabled people in four states and the Navajo Nation.

“These donations greatly improve their daily living and self-esteem,” she said.

Shortly after starting his charity, Sudabattula went back to the same orphanage in India. This time, he brought several large boxes, filled with crutches and walkers.

“When it comes down to it, I feel a duty to help the people around me,” he said. “Everyone deserves to be healthy and happy.”