Haiti 2013

On April 15th 2013, Walkabout Foundation and a group from Greenwich Country Day School (GCDS) travelled to Haiti to individually distribute dozens of RoughRider wheelchairs to adults and kids in need all across the country.

After GCDS hosted a walkathon at its campus this past October and raised $47,000, the equivalent of 156 wheelchairs, GCDS mothers Magdalena Miguens and Nancie Forrest, teacher and head of Community Service, Jen Donnalley, Saurel Edouard, and headmaster Adam Rohdie and his wife Alisa, all travelled with Carolina and Monica Gonzalez-Bunster to Haiti to build and distribute many of the wheelchairs the GCDS students fundraised for.

The team travelled all across Haiti over 5 days, starting with a visit to St Boniface in Fond des Blanes where Adam Rohdie played basketball with some of Walkabout’s previous wheelchair recipients, followed by a stop in Les Cayes where they went from house to house donating chairs, followed by a trip to Haiti Hospital Appeal in Cap Haitian where they met Fabien, a little girl who was born with Spina bifida and had a pressure soar caused by dragging herself on the floor, to a stop at FONHARE in Quanaminthe where 30 people were eagerly awaiting their new chairs, and ending the trip in Carrefour at Hospital Adventiste d’Haiti where the team worked quickly to distribute more chairs before catching a flight back home. Each day posed a different challenge but could not have been more rewarding. That indescribable moment of seeing a person’s face light up as we personally help them gain their independence is priceless. And as Jen Donnalley so beautifully stated, “the squeals of joy will be a sound I will carry with me always.”

If your school would like to get involved and do something similar, we would love to hear from you! Please email info@walkaboutfoundation.org.