Lesson 4 We Are Global Villagers
Meet an Engineer with a Heart of Gold
Leading Free Wheelchair ____, Dr. Don Schoendorfer has given away wheelchairs to those in need around the world.
We met him last month, and he told us about his ____.
Q. At the peak of your career, you started to look for ways to help others.
Why did you ____ to focus on wheelchairs?
When I ____ Morocco in 1979, I was shocked to see a woman who was crawling across a road.
She had lost the ____ of her legs in an accident.
Nobody was paying any ____ to her.
This scene often came back to me, and one day the idea of ____ away wheelchairs came to mind.
I started to look seriously into people who need wheelchairs, and I came to learn the ____ 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 ____, I settled on bicycle wheels.
For the seat, I chose a plastic ____ chair.
It was all held together by a simple ____ frame I designed myself.
My friends thought I had ____ off the deep end.
My wife, who was supportive at ____, soon got tired of my messing up our garage.
But I kept going and finally made a ____ wheelchair.
It could be built and delivered anywhere in the world for ____ than $80.
Q. Do you have any unforgettable stories about your wheelchair?
Sure. I built the first one hundred ____ by hand.
One of ____ was given to a 16-year-old girl in India.
She had lived her whole life in a ____ room.
When she got her wheelchair, she ____ out by herself.
Finding that she could get from one place to ____ under her own power, she burst into tears.
What has Free Wheelchair ____ done so far?
Working with other like-minded ____, we have distributed wheelchairs in over 90 countries for almost 20 years.
At last in 2017, the ____ wheelchair 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 going to deliver our next million ____ by 2025.
It’s going to take half the ____ it took to give out the first million.
____ never slow down.
Dr. Don Schoendorfer is a biomedical engineer who lives in Santa ____, California.
He has achieved a great deal in the ____ of biomedical technology.
In ____, he founded Free Wheelchair Mission, a non-profit organization, and started to give away wheelchairs to people in need.
He has received several awards for the work that ____ Wheelchair Mission has done around the world.