Tim Balz

Grade 11, Plainfield, Indiana

"Do not wait for opportunities to present themselves; seek them out."

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Project: Freedom Chairs of Indiana

When Tim Balz, a junior at Plainfield High School in Plainfield, Indiana, saw one of his classmates use a manual wheelchair every day, he was puzzled. Why, he wondered, didn’t the guy use an electric wheelchair to make it easier to get around?

When Tim asked a special education teacher about his classmate, he discovered the young man’s family couldn’t afford an electric wheelchair. The teacher explained that with an electric wheelchair, the student’s mental and physical skills would improve.

So Tim, a robotics fan, started tinkering. A neighbor had given him a broken wheelchair to use for parts for a robot. Instead of salvaging parts from it as he had planned to do, Tim tried repairing it. In the process he became friends with the student in the wheelchair.

Though Tim wasn’t able to fix the wheelchair he had, he was determined to help. He began looking online for an electric wheelchair. When he found one, he didn’t have enough money to purchase it, so he traded his electric scooter for the wheelchair.

Then Tim went to work, modifying the wheelchair for his classmate. One of the toughest things to do was to rewire it. His friend was left-handed, and the chair was built for a right-handed person. But Tim worked every day after school so the chair would be ready in time for graduation ceremonies.

With his new wheelchair, Tim’s friend became more independent. Because he no longer had to rely on someone else pushing him in a manual chair it was easier for him to get around, to do his job, and to interact with his doctors and family.

Motivated by the change he saw in his friend, Tim realized that there were others like his classmate who also could benefit from having an electric wheelchair, but didn’t have the means to pay for one. Freedom Chairs of Indiana was born. Within a year of creating the organization, Tim had donated chairs to 30 people, improving their lives in the process.

The Power of Children Award grant allowed Tim to pay for a storage space for the wheelchairs people donated to him. He also spent some of the money on new batteries for the chairs. In 2014 he continued to refurbish wheelchairs and head up Freedom Chairs as he completed his degree in mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Recipient of a Red Cross Hall of Fame Award, Tim had already taken part in one project that resulted in a patent at Rose-Hulman, and he had big plans for the future. He intended to create his own wheelchair company, making more affordable wheelchairs. No one should be denied the freedom of mobility, he asserted, and wheelchairs can always be improved to give the people who use them the most flexibility possible.

That was in keeping with his belief that working to make even a small impact on a big issue is a help. “If you help to improve just one person’s life,” he said, “then it is worth it.” He had learned that lesson one wheelchair at a time.

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