Pictured: This amphitheater was the base of operations for setting the chairs up and retrofitting them to each individual recipient.

By Glenda Masselink –

Imagine, if you can, you are a 22-year-old disabled woman who, for the first time in your life, is free to move about without your parents carrying you on their backs. Or, an adult male who can once again leave his small home unassisted. These are real life examples of what International Ministries wheelchair program accomplishes in third world countries where regular access to healthcare and medical equipment is difficult to find.

Hope Haven International Ministries (HHIM) was started in Rock Valley, Iowa, in the early 1990s. Its central location and warehouse has now moved to Sioux Falls, S.D. Used and new wheelchairs are collected throughout the United States and delivered to Sioux Falls. A small staff and volunteers sort the chairs and send them to wheelchair workshops located in NW Iowa, SW Minnesota, and the South Dakota Penitentiary. Volunteers in these small communities manufacture, rebuild, and repair the donated wheelchairs to nearly new condition. Since children’s chairs are almost always new, not rebuilt, they are put together by penitentiary inmates.

Edgerton has had a wheelchair program since the mid- 1990s. When Edgerton men started volunteering, they carpooled to Rock Valley. When a building the volunteers could use became available on the Evert De Vries acreage west of town, they started their own shop. Over the years there have been three different locations and many volunteers. Currently the wheelchair shop is located in a building owned by Chandler Feed, also known as the old bowling alley. The building is large enough to give the volunteers room to spread out and keep all their spare parts accessible.

When I walked into the shop, I was greeted by four men thoroughly enjoying their time volunteering.

The Edgerton site had just received a new shipment of chairs from Sioux Falls so Harv Vander Top, Andy Brummel, Al Hoogland, and Adrian Kuipers were busy. According to these men, Ray Hulstein, “the man in charge,” and Duane Schmidt also volunteer but couldn’t be there that particular day. They usually work every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.

The volunteers take the chairs totally apart down to the frame. Brakes are checked and replaced, seat cushions and back cushions are checked for wear or rips, and wheel bearings replaced.

Andy Brummel, Al Hoogland, Harv Vander Top, and Adrian Kuipers stand by a torn down wheelchair.

Orv adjusting wheelchairs for recipients.