An inclusion activist and founder of the VIGILO Mobility Foundation, Jennifer Mensah Bonzie, has supported persons with physical challenges training under the Make Fashion Inclusive Program in Kumasi, with elbow and armpit clutches.
The benevolent gesture forms part of the annual outreaches of Jennifer Mensah Bonzi, who has dedicated her life to advocating for inclusion and empowerment of persons with challenges to rise above stigma, physical and psychological barriers to contribute their talents and special abilities to society.
Speaking to Ultimate/GHOne News on the sidelines of the donation, she averred, “What I am seeing here in Kumasi is very impressive. The story behind the building of this center is just aligned to my life’s story. I stopped here to make the donation and to give a motivational speech, and encouraged them.
“Being physically challenged is not the end of the world. If you cannot run and jump, you should find what else you can do with your abilities. I don’t expect anything in return. All I want is that they should be successful, do exploits and go beyond all I have done,” she encouraged.
She called for Ghana to accelerate efforts at making the country’s transportation system and physical environments accessible to persons with physical challenges insisting that though she had seen some minor improvements, accessibility in airports and road travel continues to pose mobility challenges.
Describing the donation as timely, the Ashanti Regional Representative of the Center for Employment of Persons With Disability, Steven Gyan, disclosed that his office was inundated with requests for the mobility aids whose costs were beyond the reach of physically challenged beneficiaries of the training program.
He joined calls for policy makers to go beyond flowery speeches and lofty promises for bettering the lot of Persons with Disability in Ghana and asked that more effort be rather channeled to the tangible areas that directly economically empower them and ameliorate their challenges.
The Foundation further donated a full box of mobility aids to the Ashanti Regional Prosthetics and Orthotics Center to support the facility to promptly offer assistance to patients who would immediately need the devices.
Jennifer told reporter Ivan Heathcote – Fumador, she was moved to donate to the department considering that persons requiring such services could be either hampered by their ability to pay or the delay in making the devices ready at the center.
Vigilo Annual Outreaches
Each year, Jennifer visits Ghana from her base in the United States of America where she works with the Global Program Manager Office of Disability and Inclusion at JPMorgan Chase & Co., to encourage persons with physical challenges, pay for medical bills and donate walking aids in several areas across the length and breadth of Ghana.
Her annual outreaches, have been of immense benefit to the Orthopedic Training Center (OTC) at Nsawam Adoagyiri in the Eastern Region of Ghana, where Jennifer Bonzie received training at the age of three after getting diagnosed with polio.
Aside the free provision of mobility aids, the Center received hundred bags of rice, funds and other items worth $25,000 to cater for the medical bills of persons with physical challenges including those requiring prosthetic limbs and other surgeries needed to enhance their lives.
The children at the Orthopedic Training Center some of who are challenged with dire financial and social constraints were treated to a day’s fully paid excursion to the Kwame Nkrumah memorial park and Mausoleum as a tangible intervention towards inclusion and exposure.
Vigilo Mobility Foundation which is funding the construction of an accessible center for the training and empowerment of Persons With Disabilities in the deprived areas of the Northern Region of Ghana further made cash advancements of some US $3,000 to the contractors to facilitate the smooth continuation of the project.
The community of persons with physical challenges in the Northern Region who also received mobility aids for free; together with traditional authorities were inspired by Jennifer’s story of resilience and perseverance and encouraged her to remain resolute in her noble efforts that continue to point persons in situations of despair, to a light of hope.
The additional region which receive donations from Vigilo’s 2025 outreach is the Central Region where Mrs. Jennifer Mensah Bonzie dispatched boxes of mobility aids but was unable to present them in person as a result of the distance and roughness of the journey through patches of bad roads leading to the point of donation.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
