2025 Trip

We are very happy to say we have completed our project for 2025!

A small team delivered 40 Participant Life ‘Wildebeest’ chairs over Summer 2025. Participant Life are an American B Corp whose focus is creating affordable, durable and high-quality chairs which are accessible to everyone. We feel it makes complete sense for us to be working with a company with such similar goals and who has experience providing wheelchairs to low middle income countries. We used their all terrain chair which is customisable to the user, easily maintained with popular bike and motorcycle parts and designed with use outdoors in mind - a perfect fit for our mission in Senegal.

Although the Monsoon Season did complicate things slightly we didn’t let it stop us and we organised six days across Senegal and Gambia where we gathered together our recipients from each area. We tailored the wheelchairs to their specific needs and measurements, ate together and discussed the future direction of ‘Diam Rek’. For our recipients who weren’t able to make it we delivered their wheelchair to them at home instead.

One of our biggest goals this year was  establishing a network of trusted individuals who were interested in taking a leading role in the charity and this was one of the greatest successes of the project so far. We currently have responsible team members in each area we are operating, several of who are members of the local disability community. This means that research and selection of recipients in the future will be far more practical and can be organised remotely.  In addition to this having a member of the local community organising the selection very much aligns with our ethos of ‘Diam Rek’ being led by the individuals it serves.

Although we worked in partnership with local Disability Organisations (particularly in regards to our distribution days which were ran from various ‘Centre de Handicapes’) it is our belief that the most pragmatic and objective selection process takes place on an individual basis. In order to achieve an unbiased selection of those most in need we visited each of our potential recipients at their home and performed an assessment. This was preferable to delivering the chairs directly to a Disability Association or leaving the selection in their hands; which can often lead to wheelchairs not being distributed fairly, internal strife within the Association and sometimes even chairs being sold instead of donated.

Due to the many shipping and logistics delays we experienced we have been forced to postpone our Surf Camp until after this years Monsoon Season. We have a three day camp planned in Cap Skirring, Casamance for some of our recipients and members of the local disability community. The main focus is providing a platform for workshops ran by members of the Diam Rek team and the local community in which skills are shared (we are looking forward to partnering with the Wave Project Bristol for some of these activities).  Some of these will include physical activities (such as surfing and yoga), wheelchair skills, wheelchair maintenance and mindfulness. The idea behind this is to promote the opportunity for growth and resilience and to develop personal goals by working outside of individuals comfort zones. Further details to come once rescheduled.