Charities & travellers unite to deliver donated prosthetic legs to Africa
Melanie May | 20 March 2019 | News
Legs4Africa is enlisting travellers to Africa to help it deliver prosthetic legs to where they need to go in a new project with Emmaus Bristol.
Legs4Africa is a Bristol based charity that sends over prosthetic legs that would otherwise end up in landfill. While it is now collecting and recycling over a thousand prosthetic legs a year, the challenge has always been how to get them to where they are needed without costing the charity a lot of money.
The ‘Deliver a Leg’ project launched at the beginning of the year and utilises travellers who are already venturing to the countries the charity works in, asking them to use some of their luggage allowance to transport equipment to its partner mobility centres. Emmaus in Bristol provides Legs4Africa with luggage bags for volunteers to carry the components in when they fly.
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The charity is asking charity workers, adventurers or people doing business in Africa to become a Leg Deliverer. People can contact it through the site to let it know they are travelling and willing to help.
Poppy Jacobs, a leg deliverer in December 2018, said:
“Before I travelled to Ghana for a conference, I picked up a box of legs and feet from the very friendly Legs4Africa team in Bristol, who couldn’t have been more helpful. They provided me with a letter explaining the contents of the box, in case I needed it at customs, but nobody blinked an eyelid. All I had to do was inform Legs4Africa where I was staying, and they arranged for someone to collect the box from my hotel – I didn’t even need to be there. I’ll definitely be doing this again, it was so easy and I was glad to put my spare luggage allowance to brilliant use.”
- DFID Small Charities Challenge Fund opens new grant round (6 September 2019)
- 10 things you didn’t expect you could donate to charity (10 November 2014)
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.