The 2025 Senior Australian of the Year is Brother Thomas Oliver Pickett AM, the co-founder of Wheelchairs For Kids. ACM is proud to be a media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.
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00:00Thank you very much everyone, it's just overwhelming. I feel very humble to receive this very prestigious
00:11award of Senior Australian of the Year and I dedicate this award to all our wonderful
00:17volunteers both inside and outside the factory. First of all I must congratulate all those
00:25talented people in my section here, the senior section and all the other sections on the
00:31wonderful things that you do that go rewarded to help other people and I really admire that
00:38and you're trying to make the world a better place. As the co-founder of Wheelchairs for
00:44Kids Australia, nothing can be achieved unless you have good people around you. This is why
00:50our project has become a large Australian charity. Everyone who makes the wheelchairs
00:57is a volunteer and our volunteer workforce come from all various careers far too many to mention.
01:05Very importantly we have four occupational therapists and two physiotherapists amongst
01:12our volunteer group and they've been all over the world training carers and parents how to
01:17fit the children correctly to the wheelchair and that means as far away as Mongolia, through the
01:24African countries, up through the Pacific Islands, into Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and other places
01:32thereabouts. We have 240 retired volunteers throughout the week in our factory and we
01:38average 50 volunteers per day. As well as all those who work voluntarily in the factory we
01:45have hundreds of ladies who crochet and knit rugs and soft toys. They come from nursing homes,
01:51they come from church groups, they come from individuals and even come as far away as Victoria,
01:58New South Wales, they come from country places in Western Australia as well and we're very
02:05grateful. We send a knee rug and two soft toys with each wheelchair.
02:10Sorry, there's just a light here. Sorry, we send hundreds of, I'm sorry about this,
02:25I've got to get this in the right spot. We send a knee rug and two soft toys with every wheelchair
02:33and a large rug for the Hampton family. We have a wonderful group of sewers also who sew all the
02:43covers for the hips and trunk supports as well as the headrests and the backrests. Our wheelchair
02:49is made following the guidelines of the World Health Organisation. It's anyone who make a
02:54wheelchair for children with a disability to follow. We're the only organisation in the world
02:59to take up this challenge and as the children grow so does the wheelchair. So from the age of
03:04four to the age of 16 years the children with disabilities can use the wheelchair. There are 11
03:11various movements in the chair which makes this possible and there's no one else in the world
03:16making this unique wheelchair. I thank the Rotary Club of Scarborough for owning the
03:22project Wheelchairs for Kids and also I'd like to thank the Christian Brothers for their wonderful
03:27support from the beginning of this project and also I want to thank all our sponsors,
03:34our suppliers, our donors and everyone else who's helped in the way of the wheelchairs.
03:40Thanks to all the humanitarian agencies both here in Australia and overseas
03:44for taking up the freight and customs cost to get the wheelchairs to their destination.
03:50Our wheelchairs cost $275 for our volunteers to make and for this sum of money a child
03:57with a disability receives a new life by getting off the ground, having dignity as well as mobility.
04:04They can now go to village school and have an education. They mix with their friends and feel
04:10included. Any donations no matter how big or how small will enable us to make more wheelchairs
04:18and in our strategic plan we hope to make 6,000 wheelchairs a year as from the end of 2026.
04:26We have donated now over 61,000 wheelchairs to 81 countries around the world
04:31including northern Australia.
04:37Please help us to make more wheelchairs so many more children with disabilities receive a
04:43wheelchair and have a much better life. You can go to our website, all the W's, wheelchairsforkids.org
04:50if you would like to donate. I'll just finish with this. We got back, we get hundreds of reviews
04:58from the various countries around the world we send them to and just picked out this one.
05:03A little girl named Mercy, she's from Zambia. She said, dear friend, thank you for the wheelchair
05:10and the teddy bear and a beautiful rug that you gave me. You have made my heart rejoice again.
05:15I can go, I can now go to school and be with my friends. Thank you very much.