CURE International and Joni and Friends Announce Strategic Partnership to Support Children with Disabilities
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – July 21, 2025:
The Cub wheelchairs, donated by Joni and Friends, are designed to navigate the narrow doorways and unpaved streets common in the communities and villages where CURE patients live. These adaptive wheelchairs provide support to help children sit upright and can be adjusted by a technician to grow with the child.
Joni and Friends, founded in 1979 by Christian author and disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada, has distributed hundreds of thousands of wheelchairs to high-need countries through its Wheels for the World™ program, and the ministry’s experts spoke into the design of the Cub wheelchair.
This new wheelchair will be transformational for the children served at CURE Children’s Hospital of Uganda (CURE Uganda)—children living with severe neurological conditions like hydrocephalus, spina bifida, brain tumors, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy. CURE provides patients with life-saving neurosurgeries, but those with certain conditions may still require a wheelchair for mobility.
“The majority of the families of our precious patients lack the financial resources to purchase assistive devices, including wheelchairs, when their children are in need of additional support for mobility. The specialized wheelchairs from Joni and Friends will be a transformational gift to support hundreds of our most vulnerable patients. The joy on the faces of the first children to receive these wheelchairs says it all! We are so grateful for this new collaboration with Joni and Friends,” said Tim Erickson, Executive Director of CURE Uganda. “These new wheelchairs will lift a burden from these families and allow children to more easily participate in community life.”
The impact of the new partnership is already evident at CURE Uganda, where the first group of children recently received their wheelchairs, which were custom-fit for each child.
“Disability can feel like a wilderness—a wasteland of one hardship after another. But together, we are making a way through those hardships and blazing fresh, hope-filled paths into the wilderness of suffering,” said Joni Eareckson Tada, Founder and CEO of Joni and Friends, who became a quadriplegic after a diving accident at the age of seventeen and has been in a wheelchair for over 58 years.
CURE and Joni and Friends share a deep commitment to serving children with disabilities in the name of Jesus—meeting both physical and spiritual needs. “We are honored to partner with Joni and Friends, an organization whose mission and purpose so deeply align with our own,” said Justin Narducci, President/CEO of CURE International. “Together, we are serving children living with significant disabilities who still need mobility support when they leave our hospital.”
This collaboration also builds upon ongoing work through Joni’s House Uganda, a program of Joni and Friends focused on physical care, economic empowerment, and spiritual support. With training from the team at Joni’s House, CURE Uganda’s technicians are equipped to custom-fit wheelchairs to best suit each child.
“Joni and Friends is dedicated to transforming lives through Christ-centered care, and partnering with CURE in Uganda strategically furthers our reach to help children with disabilities,” said Steve Bundy, Senior Vice President of International Ministries at Joni and Friends. “Together with CURE, we can ensure children receive not only life-changing medical treatment, but also the gifts of mobility, independence, and the saving love of Jesus.”
This partnership brings together two Christ-centered disability ministries to provide the complete care that children left behind by society need: quality surgical care, the gift of mobility, and gospel hope.
About CURE International
CURE International is a Christian nonprofit organization operating a global network of eight children’s hospitals that offer surgical interventions at no cost to children living with treatable disabilities. CURE hospitals provide life-changing care for children suffering from conditions such as cleft lip/palate, neglected clubfoot, bowed legs, burn contractures, spina bifida, brain tumors, and hydrocephalus. In addition to world-class clinical service, CURE ministers to the emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their communities. Since its first hospital opened in 1998, CURE has completed more than 5.5 million patient visits, performed 369,000+ life-changing surgeries, and shared the gospel with 2.1 million people. For more information, visit cure.org.
About Joni and Friends
Since 1979 Joni and Friends has been committed to reaching and serving people with disabilities through practical help and the saving love of Jesus. The Joni and Friends International Disability Center in Agoura Hills, California, serves as the administrative hub for ministry programs around the world. With every wheelchair and Bible delivered, every retreat and respite event held, and every church mobilized to integrate and honor people with disabilities, Joni and Friends follows the call of Jesus found in Luke 14: “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.… Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full” (Luke 14:21, 23, NIV). For more information, visit joniandfriends.org.
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