Seven volunteer fabricators from Bethel Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Center, Iowa, are helping to increase production of Hope Haven International’s tiltable wheelchair, a tool developed in 2020 by engineering students at Dordt University.
“Each wheelchair is carefully selected and tailored to meet the unique needs of the recipient, ensuring comfort, mobility, and independence,” Hope Haven wheelchair operations manager Joe Vander Zee told Bethel media coordinator Renee Wielenga, who wrote about the operation for Bethel CRC’s “The Connection.”
“Hope Haven International Ministries based in Sioux Falls, S.D., has been refurbishing, manufacturing, and distributing custom-fitted wheelchairs—provided free of charge—to transform the lives of children and adults in need since 1994,” Wielenga wrote.
Hope Haven works with 10 supporting workshops to manufacture or refurbish wheelchairs. “The Sioux Center shop, located within a former garage space on the campus of Whispers of Love, Hope &Joy (a restorative community for survivors of domestic violence and women with disabilities), opened within the last year but has only been staffed by volunteers on a regular weekly basis for about a month,” Wielenga wrote. The Bethel CRC volunteers set up shop on Monday afternoons while members of New Life Church in Sioux Center take over on Thursdays.
Roger Feekes, one of the Bethel retirees involved, said they support each other in the work. “We usually have two guys at each station to help each other remember what pieces go together,” he told Wielenga. “Once we get through the four stations, we break the wheelchair back down a certain way again and box them for shipping.”
More than 155,000 wheelchairs have been distributed in 110 countries since Hope Haven’s inception. “There are a lot of people in this world who have such a better quality of life because they were given a wheelchair,” Feekes told Wielenga. “Coming to the shop once a week is really just a small way to help support the ministry.”
Between the Bethel and New City church volunteers the Sioux Center shop is meeting its goal of building 10 wheelchairs each week.