Iowa Hawkeye Wide Receiver, Reece Vander Zee, recently spent a day with his family refurbishing wheelchairs at the Hope Haven International Ministries (HHIM) workshop in Rock Valley. The 18-year-old from Rock Rapids is studying business at the University of Iowa and said that volunteerism is important to him.

“It’s definitely important to give people hope and help out wherever you can, no matter how big or small.”

Reece and his five younger siblings — Liam, Blake, Ayda, Nora, and Evan — and their parents, Joe and Merideth, have a homemade ice cream sandwich business, and the family chooses one area ministry each year to support with a portion of the proceeds. This year, they sponsored 15 wheelchairs through HHIM.

“It started similar to a lemonade stand in front of our house,” said Joe, who is the operations manager for HHIM. “It’s continued to grow each year, and part of that business is giving to local ministries. So we encourage the kids to give from that business each year.”

Joe has been the operations manager at HHIM for about a month and a half. He is thoroughly impressed with the organization’s impact, both nationally and internationally.

“I’m quickly learning about all the awesome things that Hope Haven International Ministries does,” he said. “With the wheelchair ministry, specifically, we make wheelchairs, refurbish wheelchairs, and then send them to people in need across the world.”

According to HHIM’s Director, Luke Russell, the ministry was established in 1994 after a Hope Haven board member participated in a mission trip in the Dominican Republic and witnessed a young girl who was unable to walk sitting under a tree.

“I understand that there was a girl who was pretty much left under a tree all day while her father went and worked in the field. Seeing this convicted him, so he came back and asked a simple but bold question at the next board meeting: ‘What are we going to do about this?'”

Today, 31 years later, HHIM has several regional workshops at which volunteers refurbish and manufacture wheelchairs. The wheelchairs refurbished by volunteers are regularly delivered to the workshops by HIMM’s partner ministries located across the country. On the same day the Vander Zees volunteered, the Rock Valley Rockets helped unload a shipment of 250 wheelchairs from Joni & Friends, a partner ministry from California.

“We do a lot of a lot of shipping back and forth with Joni & Friends,” said Joe. “We send them a lot of our KidChairs.”

HHIM partnered with several Dordt University engineering students to design a pediatric wheelchair in 2006 after the ministry’s volunteers began noticing the large need for small wheelchairs. The KidChair comes in two sizes and easily adapts to children’s shapes, sizes, and positioning needs. A crucial part of assembling the pediatric wheelchairs is sewing the seating covers, and there is currently a need for more sewers. The ministry manufactures about 2,500 KidChairs per year across all of the workshops, and this is only possible because of volunteers, explained Joe.

“It costs us $275 to assemble a chair, but it’s really about a $1,500 chair,” he said. “That’s only possible because of our volunteers.”

Since its inception, HHIM has shipped nearly 148,000 wheelchairs to 109 countries. In addition to sending wheelchair shipments to other ministries around the world, HHIM sends teams of volunteers on distribution trips and has five distribution trips planned for 2025. According to Joe, the organization is planning on traveling to Costa Rica twice, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

Each volunteer team includes physical therapists and other specialists who are skilled in fitting wheelchairs to individuals. Once an individual is fitted for a wheelchair, his or her family is educated on how to assist the individual when using the chair.

HHIM’s Russell went on a distribution trip to Peru last year and met eight-year-old Isabella, who traveled eight hours with her father by bus to receive a wheelchair.

“Her dad had carried her everywhere for eight years,” he said. “When we tried to sit her in a wheelchair, she clung to him; she did not want to be separated from him. We talked with her for quite a while, and after watching the other kids wheel around in their wheelchairs, she gave it a try and was thrilled. Her dad, who appeared to be a stoic man, began crying. Isabella is now able to attend school because she has a wheelchair. There’s such an enormous need for wheelchairs around the world and, more importantly, for people to hear about the love of Christ. That’s the impetus for us.”

Written by Kelly Vander Pol, Rock Valley Bee