Tim Tew is the Head and Technical Trainer of the Agape Mobility Ethiopia wheelchair repair workshops, and he has been working with them for about three years. He and his wife Emily sparked an interest in AME at the Disabilities Expo in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where former board member Dan Mason expressed the need for a wheelchair technician at the time. He said, “Fixing wheelchairs was, you know, a skill I picked up because my wife’s in a power wheelchair, and so it’s a very convenient first job to get, and God just sort of took that and ran with it.”
The wheelchair workshops are monthly from May until October and started off with just 2-3 people, but now they have grown to about 25-50. This means they can clean, repair, and ship more wheelchairs than ever. “Every time I think we can’t do this, God shows up and we do it.”
One of the things that Tim loves about working for Agape Mobility Ethiopia is, “Getting to see those pictures that come back from Ethiopia, I’m like, I fixed that chair, and that person is now grinning from ear to ear, holding a Bible in Ethiopia. I may not have handed them the chair, but I got to be the hands and feet that got it there. That’s really cool to see on that side too.”
Outside of Agape Mobility Ethiopia, Tim works for a nonprofit organization that provides pre-employment training services to people with disabilities. He said his wife was his inspiration for all of the work he does now. “Absolutely everything that I do, my whole life, changed once I met one particular girl in a wheelchair.”
