By Mitchell Sasser | WeINSPIRE Contributor

The Solomon Islands is located in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea. There are six major islands, as well as hundreds of smaller ones. At the Kilu’ufi Hospital on the island of Malaita, there could potentially be a life-changing movement for the people there with the help of Walking Free. 

Mission Gait is a nonprofit focused on research and education in the area of gait rehabilitation. There are 20,000,000 individuals, just in the United States, suffering from walking disabilities. Walking Free is their international prosthetic training and physical rehabilitation education program.

Walking Free started in 2000, and in the following years, actively worked in Jordan, Turkey, and the Dominican Republic, partnering with rehabilitation professionals to help people regain mobility. 

One of their main focuses at the moment is on the Solomon Islands. Jeff Allen is the Project Manager for Solomon Islands, and their mission is to help rehabilitate the people hits close to home for him. His father-in-law, Hudson Sade, stepped on a piece of glass in 2018, and his foot became infected and had to be amputated. Hudson was brought over to the United States for rehabilitation, and through this, met David Lawrence, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mission Gait. 

“Think about that idea of how much we take for granted, getting up and walking across the room,” Lawrence said. “I want to go to work, I want to go to the bathroom; it’s easy because I have two legs that function. Imagine if you lost one of those legs. The beauty is the technology available today, the old technology, in fact,  it’s very, very easy and less expensive to get and make - could change someone's life.”

Mission Gait does training and education for doctors and therapists to advance the level of care that already exists in the United States. Lawrence said Walking Free is about going places where the level of care is nonexistent and providing the opportunity to help people in need. 

"If this project is done right it will be successful, and it will go throughout the pacific,” Allen said.

The Walking Free team hosted a fundraiser on February 22 titled “Stepping Stones to Walking Free Solomon Islands,” to raise awareness and financial support for this project. $150,000 is needed to complete the project, and they’ve made significant progress. 

There are three phases for fundraising. Phase 1 has been completed, and that is $20,000 to get started for the design and build-out of the container lab. Phase 2 is the equipment, with $45,000 needed. The final phase is the shipping and airline tickets for the team to get to the Solomon Islands. 

The container lab is what will be shipped to the Solomon Islands. It will be purchased and assembled in the United States, packed with equipment needed to make the prosthetics. 

Some of the equipment still needed includes a $10,500 PDQ Infrared Oven used for heating plastics needed to produce prosthetic sockets and orthotics and braces, and a $6,800 shoe machine used for sanding and finishing of plastics and rubbers needed in the fabrication and fitting of the prosthetic.  

“The nice thing about this is it can be replicated,” Lawrence said. “If we do this in the Solomon Islands and it works, we can say, ‘hey, you’re over in Papua New Guinea, no problem.’ This container, we can do the same thing.”

Lawrence said the Walking Free team is intent on doing this, and doing it right. Allen said he’d like to be 70% of the way ready by July or August. 

“We’re not buying cheap junk, we’re buying proper equipment that 50 years from now can still function,” Lawrence said.

Gail Grisetti is the Director of Walking Free and has worked with David Lawrence for the past 18 years. According to Gail, Walking Free has a signed memorandum of understanding with the ministry of health in the Solomon Islands, that if the container is completed and delivered, they are completely on board with the project. The hospital has also agreed to create a foundational slab on which the container will be placed, and the country has shown its commitment by sending two individuals to become trained prosthetists. 

“If we didn’t have the various memorandums of understanding, I wouldn’t feel so confident that this project could be successful,” Grisetti said. 

“When Jeff starts talking about the Solomon Islands, you just get caught up in what he is saying because he has such a passion and a belief in trying to help the people there,” Grisetti said. “His enthusiasm is really infectious, and we thought because we have experience and because he has the knowledge of the country, that we could work together.”

If you would like to donate directly, click the link here. To learn more about the project, click the link here.