Wheels of Change

Kenneth Behring walked down the dusty path, the last steps in a trip that had brought him from his home in California to a village in Vietnam.

He stopped before a hut. A couple invited him in. In the corner on a pile of rags huddled a little girl. She watched the stranger cautiously, wrapping her arms around her legs.

Bui Thi Huyen couldn’t walk. For her whole life she’d crawled or been carried. Now that would change.

Ken led the family outside, where others from his group were waiting. “For you,” he said, pointing to a new wheelchair.

He lifted the girl from her father’s arms into the chair. He showed her how to move the chair. Frightened, she began to cry. Then she moved the chair herself; the tears were gone.

Bui Thi Huyen’s life would never be the same. Neither would Ken’s.

“I worked hard all my life to become prosperous,” he says. “I owned houses, cars, a private jet, even a professional football team. But I lacked purpose, something you achieve by giving your heart, time and money to provide a better life for another—without seeking anything in return.”

Ken longed to find that one thing he could do to make the world a better place. On his trips abroad, he became aware of how desperate many countries were for medical supplies and equipment.

Soon he was helping with relief efforts. He agreed to sponsor a shipment of refurbished wheelchairs—if he could go along.

“I’d never thought about wheelchairs. No one close to me had ever needed one. But that trip to Vietnam changed everything. I realized there were hundreds of thousands of people who were outcasts because they couldn’t walk—people who couldn’t be part of family activities or hold down jobs. People who spent their years lying in bed, isolated and alone.”

Within months Ken created the Wheelchair Foundation. This organization’s mission is “to deliver a wheelchair to every child, teen and adult in the world who needs one.”

Ken is slowly making good on that promise. In less than 10 years 750,000 wheelchairs have been given to recipients in 153 countries. With extra-heavy wheels, sturdy tires and sealed bearings, these chairs are built for use in developing countries.

“Growing up during the Great Depression, I knew what poverty was,” says Ken. “My father worked in a lumberyard and my mother cleaned houses. None of our neighbors had much, but everybody in our community helped each other. That’s how we survived tough times.”