2025 Senior Australian of the Year Brother Thomas Oliver Pickett AM

Australian Community Media

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.

Transcript

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.

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