ROTARIANS in Chipping Sodbury are hoping a donation of wheelchairs will be the turnaround impoverished youngsters in South Africa desperately need.
Disabled children in Cape Town have been given 140 wheelchairs after a fundraising drive by Chipping Sodbury Rotary Club.
Members were spurred into action during a presentation last year from the Wheelchair Foundation, a charity which organises the distribution of wheelchairs to disabled people throughout the world who are unable to access aid through the normal health agencies.
Nigel Kelly, international officer of the club, contacted the Hout Bay Rotary Club, in Cape Town, whose president Peter Johnson lived in Yate whilst working for Renishaw, in Wotton-under-Edge.
"It seemed the ideal solution to have somebody I knew personally and who had local connections to Chipping Sodbury and Yate to help with our project," said Mr Kelly.
"Hout Bay Rotary Club has been fantastic in arranging the initial ordering and sizing of the chairs as the recipients can be small children, teenagers and adults through to the importing ,delivery and final handover of the wheelchairs."
Mr Kelly is due to visit Hout Bay before Christmas to see the wheelchairs in use and to thank the Rotary Club in South Africa for their help.
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