Gerry Georgatos: How a group of tireless WA volunteers have helped needy children from war-ravaged nations

Wheelchairs for Kids is one of those charities where everyone is a volunteer, where no one draws any form of remuneration. In its near quarter-century existence, this tireless salt-of-the-earth charity has donated rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to 91 countries — near half our world’s nations. More than 250 volunteers, the majority retirees, are rostered to manufacture the wheelchairs at the Wheelchairs for Kids factory in a northern Perth suburb. “We are changing lives, all over the world,” is regularly said by 82-year-old volunteer workshop manager, Brother Ollie Pickett. The wheelchairs, with puncture-proof tyres, are manufactured to last the duration of a childhood and are adjustable. “We are at present producing 300 specialised wheelchairs per month,” says 88-year-old volunteer CEO, Gordon Hudson. More can be produced but that depends on donations which are needed to buy the materials. Gordon understands some of the difficult terrains where the charity’s wheelchairs are needed: “Our technical progress group is always working on making improvements. The latest being a much stronger front swivel wheel and tyre as we have had a few reports of cracking — wait for it — after four years of being pushed through stony and muddy ground. We aim at perfection.” As of April 2022, Wheelchairs for Kids has manufactured 51,000 rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to fill the unmet need in our world’s most difficult terrains, remotest regions and in war-ravaged nations. Wheelchairs for Kids has the volunteers to manufacture and donate double and triple its annual output. It’s only the materials that need buying. Each adjustable wheelchair needs $200 worth of materials: from $16 for the chassis, $30 for the wheels, $14 for the brakes, $25 for the footrests and so on. $200 ensures mobility for a child. Since 2006, when my association with this charity began, I have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to ship rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to war-ravaged countries — including Iraq, Libya and Syria. Our association has included 11 new recipient nations. Alongside a friend I met while in the tertiary sector, we shipped more than a thousand rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to Iraq over a couple of years — 340 wheelchairs at a time. Riyadh Al Hakimi was a former Iraqi refugee who one day walked into my office at Murdoch University in mid-2006. He studied at Curtin University and would graduate with a Bachelor of International Studies. He was involved with a program I founded, Students Without Borders. Students Without Borders’ flagship project was a computer recycling program. We collected computers from verges and received donations of computers that were being superseded so students and community members could refurbish them. From 2004 to 2009, Students Without Borders donated 55,000 computers to anyone without one, both in Australia and to students and communities abroad. That day Riyadh walked into my office, he asked if we could donate rough terrain wheelchairs to children in Iraq. I’ve never forgotten it. During our conversation, he said: “The years of sanctions have deeply affected Iraqi society and people have learned to survive individually and have lost the sense of community and caring for others.” He came from a region of Iraq devastated by the impacts of war. Riyadh described amputee children dragging themselves through the streets. Riyadh also described to me a pre-invasion Iraq, one which I knew to be so, where it did not matter whether someone was Sunni or Shi’ite — and marriage and business between Sunnis and Shi’ites occurred daily. He said, “Till this war was started on us, no Iraqi ever asked me whether I am Sunni or Shi’ite. Never.” Riyadh asked me if I could help some of the children — amputees. We teamed up and organised for 327 rough terrain wheelchairs manufactured in Perth. We readied the shipment in 2007 to leave Fremantle port to Um Qasr port in Basra but the then United Nations’ sanctions got in the way and all the shipping companies stated it was too dangerous. We didn’t give up. We contacted a then-Australian senator, Christopher Evans. The senator empathised and organised for the Australian Defence Forces to fly by Hercules the cargo from Sydney’s Moorebank to Kuwait. The cargo was driven across the continent from Perth to Sydney. In Kuwait, the Australian Defence Forces transported the cargo of wheelchairs to the Iraqi border. Riyadh and others met them at the border and the 327 children’s wheelchairs were transported and donated to the towns of Najaf, Ramadi and Samawa. Nearly a decade ago, with vital fundraising from Sydney’s Syrian diaspora we shipped 340 rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to the Syrian port city of Latakia. 73,000 bombs had fallen from the skies, many maiming children. When some learnt we had shipped a container to Syria, I was called by two major Australian news mastheads suggesting this deed could be viewed by Australians as aiding “the enemy”. I responded we are not armament smugglers but helping children — amputees. The hatchet job never took place. Soon after, we shipped another container of rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to Latakia; the tragedy is beyond mere words. It breaks my heart every time a shipment leaves — to the Congo, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, to wherever — bombs, missiles, human-made-abominations maiming children. In 2015, Sydney’s Chinese diaspora raised funds and we shipped more than 500 children’s wheelchairs to the poorest children of provincial China. In July 2015, I visited Shanghai. I was taken on a tour of a Shanghai orphanage — the world’s largest — 2000 abandoned babies and toddlers with disabilities. During the orphanage visit, I learnt 160 children were without wheelchairs. I made a commitment to the orphanage director, Lucy. With the funds raised, months later Wheelchairs for Kids shipped the container to Shanghai. I keep few tangibles, but I have kept Lucy’s two-worded email — “Thank You.” Despite all the wrong in our world, there’s good, there’s love. Despite the abomination of millions killed in wars and civil strife each year in our world, millions maimed, millions who are refugees, the billions in poverty, we must remain solid in the love or in its longing, in never giving up. Australia’s official overseas development assistance as a proportion of gross national income is nowhere near where it should be. It currently rests at 0.21 per cent. However, Australia is the world’s 12th biggest economy. Australia’s ODA is less than the OECD average of 0.32 per cent. The actual OECD’s ODA target is 0.7 per cent and presently only seven countries are on target to meet it, but not Australia. There is more measurable poverty among the human family than ever before, with both absolute and relative poverty guaranteed to accelerate. The horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are diabolical efforts to mask this. Eight of ten of the human family live on less than USD$10 per day. One in two live on $5.50 daily. One in four $3.30 daily. The World Bank sets the international poverty lines. In 2015, it revised them. Extreme poverty had been people living daily on $2.50. They revised it to $1.90. With the 60cents reduction, suddenly, hundreds of millions of sisters and brothers were supposedly lifted from extreme poverty. Gerry Georgatos is volunteer co-ordinator, National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project and founder of The Georgatos Foundation