"I actually had the potential and the means to improve the quality of someone's life."

Last winter, I was rushing down the three flights of stairs and out the door in an ernest attempt to make it to the bus stop.  As the door closed behind me, I saw the 54 line pull up to the stop across the street  I took a quick step off the curb and onto a slanted patch of ice that somehow had built up on the concrete.  My ankle went one way, my knee the other, all my weight on the lovely lateral bulge where your fibula and tibia connect.  Torched, twisted, sprained and a slight chip of a bone, landed me the the ER.  This isn't a rare event of the citizens of Minnesota in January.  I always thought it was pretty cool when people driving motorcycles would wave to other "bikers" on the road when they had no idea who they were, they knew they had some common bond.  Now I had my own; crutches and a boot that went up just below the knee.  Anyone with a similar predicament got a waive or just a subtle head nod acknowledging how, although not anything enjoyable, we had something in common.
 
So there is the painful and unpleasant back story to what lead me to find the Crutches For Africa organization.  In a small but cozy one bedroom apartment, crutches and a surgical boot are obnoxious.  No eBay subsribers or craigslist followers were interested in my used mobility aids regardless of how valuable they are.  But the apartment still needed to be de-cluttered.  Given the medical bill, it occurred to me that there were no doubt people all over the world who probably couldn't afford or didn't have access to these, but I really had no idea how to go about reaching those people.  I decided to just start with google-ing "donating crutches" and second on the list was Crutches For Africa.  I was hooked.  After an amazing and inspiring conversation with one of the organizations founders, I found myself empowered.  I actually had the potential and the means to improve the quality of someone's life.  I had the venue to enforce something that the founder and I believe to be a absolute truth; there should be a basic standard of human life and health that we strive to provide as global citizens, one of those elements is the ability to walk.

Rachel S.