The community is continuing to rally behind the Tabs for Wheelchairs program.
13-year-old Delainey Disna, who lives with Trisomy 13, is next in line to receive a brand-new wheelchair.
Derek Thiessen and Chantelle Horel have been collecting tabs for the program for years, and their efforts are once again helping a child in need.
“This is our second round of tabs collected,” Horel says. “The first time, I just had the goal of surpassing my body weight. The first time around, we collected 115 pounds, that took about five and a half years to do, and that was donated a few years ago, back in September, I think.
Thanks to the couple’s donation, Delainey is now one step closer to receiving her new wheelchair.
“This time around, we have about 175 pounds,” she says.
Delainey’s mother, Shannon Broesky, was stunned.
“That's crazy! That's a lot of tabs,” she says.
Of course, they didn’t collect all the tabs on their own. Friends and family pitched in to help make it possible.
“They had a challenge to see who could collect as many tabs or the most tabs in a year, and then they donated all those to Chantelle, knowing that she was collecting, and then here we are to pass that along,” Thiessen says.
Horel, who works as an EA in the Hanover School Division, says many of her students joined in the effort, too.
“I actually have kids that will run up to me in the hallway from a single tab, and be like ‘Ms. H, here you go!’ To we're talking like full-on bags of tabs, and they just pass them off with such pride. Again, I just take them home and collect literally sandwich bag after sandwich bag, after sandwich, and it adds up with time. Every tab counts.”
Broesky says she’s amazed by the number of tabs collected by Horel and Thiessen and is grateful for the way the entire community has come together to support the cause.
“People that I don't know personally, but Delainey has a Facebook page, and a lot of people have followed her from birth, so they'll walk up to us and they'll see us in the mall, or they'll see us out at the splash park, and they’ll be like, ‘We have tabs for you in our car!’ And they all know our names, and we have a bunch of tabs collecting in the back of the van too, so I know what it’s like to have sandwich bags of tabs. It grows really fast.”
For Horel, this is more than just a good deed, it is personal.
“I used to coach the Junior provincial team for wheelchair basketball, and I used to play competitively, so the chair that I had was actually created by Tabs for Wheelchair as a sport athlete, and that wheelchair travelled with me around the world, Japan, Germany, you name it. Now we're seeing from a sports aspect of things to the everyday.”
In the past, Horel dropped off her donations at Trailblazers, but this time was different as she got to meet the person her tabs are helping.
“You just kind of hope that it ends up in the right hands, and now I feel like I know that it is.”
Delainey didn’t hesitate to express how happy she was.
“We don't need words, we see excitement,” Broesky says with a smile.
With files from Corny Rempel
@steinbach_online 175 pounds of tabs donated to Delainey for a new wheelchair! #Community #Support #SteinbachOnline ♬ original sound - SteinbachOnline