Lesson 4 We Are Global Villagers
Meet an Engineer with a Heart of Gold
Leading Free Wheelchair Mission, Dr. Don Schoendorfer has given away wheelchairs to those in ____ around the world.
We ____ him last month, and he told us about his life.
Q. At the peak of your career, you started to look for ways to help others.
Why did ____ decide to focus on wheelchairs?
When I visited Morocco in 1979, I was shocked to see a ____ who was crawling across a road.
She had ____ the use of her legs in an accident.
____ was paying any attention to her.
This scene often came back to me, and one day the idea of giving away wheelchairs came to ____.
I started to look seriously into people who ____ wheelchairs, and I came to learn the harsh reality.
About 100 million people in the world ____ a wheelchair, but they can’t afford one because wheelchairs are very expensive.
Q. How did you solve the problem?
I wanted to design a ____ that would be light and strong.
But more importantly, it ____ to be cheap and be made from easily accessible parts.
Instead of wheels made for wheelchairs, I settled on ____ wheels.
For the seat, I chose a ____ lawn chair.
It was all held ____ by a simple steel frame I designed myself.
My friends thought I had gone ____ the deep end.
My wife, who was supportive at first, soon got tired of my ____ up our garage.
But I kept going and finally ____ a better wheelchair.
It could be built and delivered ____ in the world for less than $80.
Q. Do you have any unforgettable stories about your wheelchair?
____. I built the first one hundred wheelchairs by hand.
One of them was given to a ____ girl in India.
She had ____ her whole life in a small room.
____ she got her wheelchair, she went out by herself.
Finding that she could get from one place to another ____ her own power, she burst into tears.
What ____ Free Wheelchair Mission done so far?
Working with other like-minded groups, we have ____ wheelchairs in over 90 countries for almost 20 years.
At last in 2017, the one-millionth ____ was delivered.
Each one ____ a life changed.
____ can now go to school or to work.
Q. Please tell our readers a little about your future plans.
We’re ____ to deliver our next million wheelchairs by 2025.
____ going to take half the time it took to give out the first million.
We’ll never ____ down.
Dr. Don Schoendorfer is a biomedical ____ who lives in Santa Ana, California.
He ____ achieved a great deal in the field of biomedical technology.
In 2001, he founded Free Wheelchair Mission, a non-profit organization, and started to ____ away wheelchairs to people in need.
He ____ received several awards for the work that Free Wheelchair Mission has done around the world.