Local Warehouse Space Needed for Wheelchairs

Joni and Friends Ohio is in search of a donor to provide warehouse space for wheelchairs and walkers that are to be sent to those in need in El Salvador.

Joni and Friends Ohio is in search of a donor with a big heart and a big warehouse space in Xenia or the greater Dayton area.

The local office of Joni and Friends Ohio, an international ministry dedicated to helping people with disabilities around the world, is in immediate need of 2,000 to 4,000 square feet of warehouse space to house wheelchairs and walkers that will be refurbished through a program called “Wheels for the World” and given to needy recipients in El Salvador.

Joni and Friends Ohio has its local office and its wheelchair warehouse on the campus of the Legacy Center in Xenia. But a recent grant is allowing for refurbishing of some of the campus – including demolition of older buildings such as the one where Joni and Friends’ wheelchairs have been housed. The organization will lose its warehouse space in September, so a new space is needed immediately in order to keep the organization from losing the 400-plus wheelchairs it currently has on site.

The organization is hoping to find an individual or business that would be willing to donate warehouse space as a tax deduction. Nursing homes, hospitals and individuals all over Ohio donate wheelchairs and walkers to Joni and Friends Ohio. Volunteers pick up wheelchairs and deliver them to the warehouse space. The chairs are then shipped to a prison, where inmates refurbish them, and then on to El Salvador.

At least twice a year, Joni and Friends Ohio organizes a small army of physical therapists, mechanics and other volunteers to travel to El Salvador and help to outfit recipients properly with wheelchairs. Volunteers have also been training Salvadoran professionals to fit people with wheelchairs year-round. Thousands of wheelchairs have passed through this regional warehouse in the past years, and it is a critical link in the wheelchair collection/restoration process.

For more information: 937-352-4095 or email: ohio@joniandfriends.org.