On January 21, 2022, the pre-emergency measures was put into effect in one metropolitan area and thirteen prefectures owing to the nationwide, rapid increase of the new corona virus infection, following Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, and Okinawa, which had the same measures on January 9 in advance. Moreover, it will take effect in eighteen more areas, that is, thirty-seven in total out of all forty-seven prefectures.
We will discontinue mini-meetings during the period of this pre-emergency measures and will let you know as soon as we’re able to restart our activities.
【Our present activity status】
About collecting wheelchairs, we got more than 400 wheelchairs from April 2021 through January 2022. When we went to schools to get wheelchairs, PTA members and teachers encouraged us by saying “Keep up your activity! Stick to it!” There are also parents who came a long way to bring their child’s wheelchair, saying “We just can’t throw away the precious wheelchair our child was riding. Please let overseas children use it.” It’s thanks to these people who provide us with their wheelchairs that we can continue our activity.
As for refurbishing work, we were able to hold mini-meetings until December 2021 for cleaning and refurbishing wheelchairs. I’d like to say thank you to people who joined mini-meetings.
For now we’re sending wheelchairs to the overseas partners who can refurbish wheelchairs by themselves, but there’s also another barrier. The corona crisis has caused a sharp rise in the container fare and lack of ships for a long time. So, though both 90 wheelchairs for Paraguay and 90 undone wheelchairs for Malaysia have been packed already, they’re all in the warehouse waiting for containers. All we can do is wait for ships and containers.
Under these circumstances, it was a great joy to send wheelchairs to the Vietnamese and Ghanaian Paralympic Teams in the wake of Tokyo Paralympics held last year.
We’re having a hard time due to the corona crisis, but we’d like to deliver as many wheelchairs as we can to overseas children with your support.
January 26, 2022 Hirokazu Morita