USAID DAA Visits Wheelchair Factory

Monday, December 5, 2016
Senior DAA of USAID’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau, Margot Ellis, visited the Mirësia Wheelchair Factory and with wheelchair users who benefited from the factory’s work.
Mina Hasaj, USAID/Albania

Today, Senior Deputy Assistant to Administrator of USAID’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau, Margot Ellis, visited the Mirësia Wheelchair Factory and with wheelchair users who benefited from the factory’s work. USAID funds ARDF’s wheelchair service which is offered to the wheelchair users among the estimated 7,000 Albanians with mobility needs. USAID initially provided $1.4 million in grants for production of the wheelchairs themselves by the first and only wheelchair factory in the Balkans, ADRF’s Miresia Wheelchair Factor. To date, and starting in 2004 through the Leahy War victims Fund, the factory has produced, adapted and distributed over 3,000 wheelchairs. In the last three years, the Church of Latter Day Saints has offered 1,399 wheelchairs, and now has committed another five years’ starting from 2016, to provide 600 per year for a total of 3,000 wheelchairs.