We met this 4 month old girl in Africa on our most recent visit. She was disfigured by a cleft palate and not thriving due to her birth defect. Her future was grim. By 6 months old, she has undergone reconstructive surgery thanks to Crutches 4 Africa. Her future is now bright and promising!

On my birthday, we traveled by van over horrible roads to a village west of Kisumu, Kenya. There, we were greeted with singing and more three hundred people hoping to receive some kind of help. There were of course those that needed mobility devices. But then there were those living with 3rd degree burns, MS, MD, Spina Bifida, amputations, leprosy, meningitis, hydrocephalic, birth defects, degenerating discs, gangrenous wounds, elephantitis and the list goes on. I sat for hours while the team of four others assisted with the distribution of mobility devices, and talked with and took photos of these suffering people. I touched them, looked them in the eye, blessed and encouraged them and prayed for them. My heart aching for their travail. A girl with one leg that came in with her arm around a friends shoulders, hopping, left with crutches. A girl crawled into a wheelchair, beaming at us all the while. So the pendulum swings, from elation to despair, in the matter of a moment. And it was the best birthday of my life.
- David (in Kenya, November 5th, 2013)

In Cabarrus County, the Rotary Club of Concord-Afton Sunset has recently begun meeting with other area Rotary clubs to spread the word about Crutches 4 Africa.

Their Concord-Afton Sunset club has a Facebook page to help people looking to schedule a pickup or drop off of an item.

The Rotary Foundation Banquet, Nov. 11 in Charlotte, will also be a collection point for those wishing to donate mobility devices. This annual event highlights the organization’s charitable fundraising, as well as current and future service projects. Read more ...

David, Candice, and Crutches 4 Africa were featured as volunteers of the month in Country Club Neighborhood Living, a magazine for Denver's Country Club area.

Read "Volunteers of the Month" on page 8.

Most of the mobility devices we distribute in Africa are used by polio survivors. This article highlights a disturbing trend--Somalia was declared "polio-free" just six years ago, but now faces a polio outbreak.

We MUST see the end of Polio! We are at the critical point where we need all hands on deck to get the job done! Three countries remain, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, where extremists hold their own children and grandchildren in harm’s way by not allowing vaccination efforts to continue and to be completed. This is not about governments, religions or ideologies but rather the safety of the children of this planet. We are their guardians and we must rid our world of this horrific and terrible disease. You can believe me because I SURVIVED IT!
--David Talbot
Read the entire article...

KCTV recently covered the Rotary Club of Lenexa's collection effort in Kansas City. The Rotary club is partnering with Theater in the Park, who will collect mobility devices that attendees bring to any of the summer performances. Read more...

Read about the spring distribution trip to Uganda and how much it costs to ship containers full of mobility devices to Africa in our July 2103 newsletter. Read more...

"Steamboat Springs — Mobility was a blessing for Dave Talbot, a polio survivor from Denver.

For years, he could walk, ski and even roller skate. Now, Talbot is back on crutches as the effects of the childhood disease take their toll.

And he knows that across the world, there are others rendered even more immobile from illness or accidents and are confined by their physical limitations."

Read the entire article by Nicole Inglis in Steamboat Today.

David and Crutches 4 Africa were featured in a recent profile in Just Around Here, an online resource for the Evergreen, CO community.

Read "Meet Dave Talbot" by Linda Kirkpatrick on Just Around Here.

Blogger Anna Rose attended the Chili Cook-off "fun" raiser this weekend and wrote about the event on the Tonic Marketing blog. Read the post.