Nuka Hart’s Mission: Free Wheels for the World

When Nuka Hart answered God’s call to lead Free Wheelchair Mission, she stepped into a global movement that has transformed more than a million lives — one wheelchair at a time. As CEO, Nuka blends her deep faith with bold leadership to bring hope and mobility to people who might otherwise be forgotten.

A Personal Faith Journey

In this episode of Amazing Greats, Nuka shares her personal faith journey. She discusses the pivotal moments that confirmed her calling. These experiences shaped her into the leader she is today. Nuka’s story is not just about her; it’s about the countless lives she has touched.

The Power of Transformation

Nuka recounts the powerful stories of transformation she’s witnessed in communities around the world. You’ll hear how simple acts of compassion can ripple across nations. Each wheelchair delivered is not just a piece of equipment; it represents hope and a new beginning for many.

Faith in Action

Nuka emphasizes how God can use even the smallest “yes” to move mountains. It’s a story of vision, perseverance, and the incredible grace of God at work through ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Whether you’re a leader, a dreamer, or someone searching for purpose, Nuka’s story will remind you that faith in motion truly changes the world.

The Impact of Free Wheelchair Mission

The Free Wheelchair Mission has made a significant impact globally. Each wheelchair provided is a testament to the power of faith and community. The organization not only delivers mobility but also dignity and independence to those in need.

Stories from the Field

Many stories illustrate the profound effects of receiving a wheelchair. For instance, one recipient, a young girl named Maria, was unable to attend school due to her mobility challenges. After receiving her wheelchair, she could finally go to school and pursue her dreams. This is just one of many stories that highlight the mission's impact.

The Role of Volunteers

Volunteers play a crucial role in the Free Wheelchair Mission. Their dedication and hard work help ensure that wheelchairs reach those who need them most. Nuka often shares how these volunteers are the backbone of the organization, embodying the spirit of giving and compassion.

Join the Movement

You can be a part of this incredible journey. Whether through donations, volunteering, or simply spreading the word, every little effort counts. Together, we can continue to change lives and bring hope to those who need it most.

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NUKA HART AT A GLANCE

CEO, Free Wheelchair Mission • Global Humanitarian Leader • Christian Testimony

Topics

Christian faith • Free Wheelchair Mission • Haiti • Disability • Mobility • Humanitarian work • Calling • Purpose • Adversity • Loss • Prayer • Faith in action • Service • Leadership • Missions • Compassion • Hope • Night to Shine • Spiritual growth

Her Faith Journey

Christian Haitian-American upbringing → Losing her mother at age seven → Wrestling with fear, mortality and “Why?” → Faith becomes a personal source of hope and resilience → Becoming a mother deepens her understanding of God's presence and her own calling → Career in nonprofit leadership → Feeling called to do more for people in Haiti and around the world → Joining Free Wheelchair Mission → Discovering a mission that connects faith, service and compassion → Leading a global organization while keeping Jesus at the center

This Episode Explores

• How losing her mother at age seven shaped Nuka's understanding of faith, mortality and God's presence

• The moment becoming a mother caused her to see her own childhood loss through her mother's eyes

• How her Haitian heritage and Christian faith shaped her sense of resilience, service and responsibility to others

• Why she left a successful leadership role at United Way to join Free Wheelchair Mission

• The remarkable story of giving her first wheelchair to a boy in Haiti who had waited eight years after losing his leg in the 2010 earthquake

• How Free Wheelchair Mission has provided more than 1.5 million wheelchairs across 95 countries

• Why the wheelchair is about much more than mobility—it is a tangible way of telling people they are loved by God and not forgotten

• How Nuka leads a faith-based organization without requiring every employee to be Christian

• The role of prayer in her leadership, including praying with her husband every morning

• Why she believes, “It's not about the missionary. It's about the mission.”

Questions Answered

• What is Nuka Hart's Christian testimony?

• How did losing her mother at age seven affect her faith?

• How did becoming a mother change her understanding of her own mother's death?

• What is Free Wheelchair Mission?

• How did Nuka know God was calling her to Free Wheelchair Mission?

• What happened when Nuka gave her first wheelchair to a child in Haiti?

• How does Free Wheelchair Mission provide wheelchairs to people around the world?

• Why are the wheelchairs specially designed for developing countries?

• How does Nuka integrate Christian faith and prayer into her leadership?

• What role does Haiti play in Nuka's story?

• What does Nuka mean by “It's not about the missionary. It's about the mission”?

• How is Free Wheelchair Mission connected to Night to Shine?

Podcast Transcript:

Faith on Wheels: Nuka Hart and the Mission of Mobility

Guest: Nuka Hart, CEO of Free Wheelchair Mission

A Mission Born from a Calling

Ric Hansen:Hey there, Ric Hansen here, your host of Amazing Greats, with the amazing Free Wheelchair Mission. It's such a great cause, and I really appreciate you taking some time to talk with us on Amazing Greats.

You know, the wonderful thing about your mission is you kind of tell us the whole organization's story in three words: Free Wheelchair Mission. Okay, that's what it is. But let's dig deeper than that.

First of all, welcome, and thank you for being here. This will be fun.

Nuka Hart:Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to your subscribers and loyal listeners for caring to listen.

Ric:Cool, cool, cool. So, is it “daring to listen”? Is that what you said?

Nuka:We all have so many choices and options nowadays, right? And I always thank people for their time because it's so precious.

Ric:Yeah, no kidding.

So, Free Wheelchair Mission started 24 years ago, right? And you weren't involved then. Can you give us a little snippet of the founding story behind the idea?

First of all, I've got to say that when I heard the name, I was thinking, “Well, you guys buy wheelchairs and then you distribute them. That's your job—distributing them.”

But it's a whole lot more than that, too, and I want to get into the depth of what it's all about.

Nuka:How it all works, right?

Okay. Well, yes, you're right. It started long before I came on. I've only been here for eight years, but 24 years ago it started with our founder, Don Schoendorfer, a biomedical engineer with the biggest heart, a boatload of humility, and a love for God.

He was answering a calling that he had to do something with his talents to solve a problem.

It was a problem that he saw when he was on a trip many years before that with his late wife. The problem was finding somebody on the ground, crawling, in need of an assistive device like a wheelchair.

And I tell people he couldn't unsee that vision that he saw when he was on vacation.

He dedicated some time to acting and doing something about it, using his talents as an engineer to innovate a solution—to find a wheelchair that could be created in a cost-effective manner, made durably, and then sent out as a design to developing countries and potentially governments and other entities to solve the problem of disability where people need a wheelchair and don't have access to one.

The overwhelming problem with wheelchairs in the world is an estimate that the World Health Organization has that there are 80 million people at any given time who need a wheelchair, and the vast majority do not have access.

So what Don was trying to achieve was finding a solution that was cost-effective and would cut into that number.

What he didn't realize, and where he answered God's call, was that it was really about him creating the wheelchair—not selling the patent or the design, but creating an organization that would make and use that design, make the wheelchairs, as you said, and then give them out en masse for free to nations, to NGOs, to individuals all over the world who are in need.

And that's what we've done from the very beginning.

It started with the very first wheelchair we gave out in India. And now, 24 years later, we've given out 1.5 million wheelchairs. We've touched 95 countries.

I tell people that I believe—and there is some data that potentially shows this—that we probably have given out, or give out, the most wheelchairs per year of any other nonprofit that exclusively focuses on wheelchair distribution.

So we're very proud of that.

The way we do it, as you described, is to manufacture the wheelchairs through our two factories, and then distribute them unassembled in boxes in container shipments to different partners all over the world.

Then we train our partners on how to assemble the wheelchairs, how to assess the recipients of the wheelchairs, and then we tell them it would be our greatest honor and privilege to be able to share the message that the individuals who are receiving these wheelchairs are loved by God and are not to be forgotten.

They are deserving of His love. They shouldn't be cast aside.

The wheelchair is our privilege to be able to give to them and to their families.

And that's how it all works.

From a Garage to a Global Mission

Ric:We have a pretty massively big God, and He expects us to do big things with His gifts.

Certainly, that little seed of a design blossomed into this amazing manufacturing situation that you're doing today, which is incredible.

Was Don handling this whole thing by himself back in the day, or did he have help?

Nuka:I tell people that Free Wheelchair Mission was kind of like what we use the terminology for now—“startup,” right?

I don't know if people used the word “startup” 24 years ago, but it was a glorified startup nonprofit.

It started in a man's garage, tinkering with everything from white resin plastic to steel to rubber. And then he gathered friends—people from his church, people that he knew who could help him do all the grunt work, all the things that it requires to run a startup.

A startup in this case was a nonprofit.

Everything from the accounting to, “How are we going to get people to take interest?” to “How are we going to ship these things?” to “Where can we find a factory that would make these things en masse?”

And then it flourished from there.

Don even says that he got a Nonprofit for Dummies book to educate himself.

Like most nonprofit—or I would say startup—leaders, there's a lot that you recognize that you don't know.

You may start out with a great idea and feel this calling, but then very soon, especially if you've had a lot of success and growth, you realize all the complexities of the execution and the business model that require other people to help you implement it.

Don quickly had to add to the team and add other people to give him that advice.

So now, 24 years later, we have a team of 40 people. We're a full-fledged nonprofit.

There have been many iterations of how we do it now that are completely evolved. We've had many iterations of our wheelchair that are not the same original design anymore.

But the nucleus of who we are has not changed.

As you said, it's a free wheelchair mission.

The driving reason, the motivation, is that we're motivated by God to do this work—to serve other people who need to be lifted up in their hearts and in their bodies with a wheelchair.

And we give them a device that is of good, sound quality, but made specifically for the developing world, designed to handle and withstand the terrain and the variety of things that you see in those countries.

Wheelchairs Built for a Different World

Ric:I was hoping you were going to touch on that because that's a significant part.

It's not something you can just go down to your local wheelchair store and get. It's something special for these special environments that they get placed into.

So that's great.

Now, how do you find ways to get these to the people that need them most? What's the structure you have in place to distribute?

Nuka:Yeah, we learned this over time. This wasn't the first idea.

Again, you start up with an idea and then you learn as you go.

Over the years, we learned that the best model for us was to rely on partners on the ground in the countries where we work.

Some of those partners could be what we call nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. In our model, it could be considered to be a nonprofit that's not affiliated with the government.

Some of them are churches. Some are clinics or hospitals. But they're all focused on serving the people in their country.

Some of them work in multiple countries. They may be headquartered in the United States or in Europe, but they work in places where there's great need.

They're the ones that partner with us contractually to receive our wheelchairs and then assess and find the people who would be seated in our wheelchairs.

They're on the ground.

They're either finding those individuals through waiting lists in clinics or hospitals of individuals who've been waiting for that kind of resource, or it could just be grassroots communication within a small community.

It could be a church or a Rotary Club or Lions Club that you see in these other countries—not just the United States—where people know that the man or woman down the street had an accident, had some sort of disability that crept up, or just birthed a child who will not be able to walk and will need a wheelchair eventually.

From there, they're able to build a list that can then be served of individuals who will get our wheelchairs when they arrive.

The Need Is Enormous—but Distribution Takes More Than a Box

Ric:Today on Amazing Greats, I'm talking with Nuka Hart, the CEO of Free Wheelchair Mission, who's bringing mobility and hope to people around the world.

There's no way that, with a demand of 80 million people, you're not always backed up.

Is there always super demand for everything that comes out of the factory?

Nuka:Yeah. The way we do our work is based upon those partnerships.

And those partnerships each have their limitations of capacity.

Even though they may have high need in their country, they may only have so much that they can handle and distribute.

They may only have so many volunteers or staff, or just the logistical complication of not having enough warehousing to store the wheelchairs.

Or in a place like I visited this summer in Brazil, where we were visiting in the Amazon, they're limited by climate and weather.

There's a finite amount of time in that specific area of that country where they can even distribute.

So while the population numbers might be high, it really does require capacity on the ground to actually deliver the product and to do it safely.

It's not like distributing loaves of bread, per se—which is extremely important work. You have to feed people.

But you don't have to consider as much, unless they have a gluten allergy, about things like we do in the wheelchair world:

Did we measure them?

Did we size them correctly?

Did we teach them the exercises they need to do to be safe in the wheelchair?

Did we consider if the wheelchair is the right solution for them?

Are we going to do more harm by putting them in a wheelchair as opposed to encouraging them to use their walker?

And is the wheelchair going to last them for a long time if they're five years old and they're probably going to grow from five to 15 to 25?

Those are all things that we have to worry about with our partners.

That's why there's also a capacity limitation and a time limitation in how it's executed.

But the prayer is that we will get enough support and be able to grow the capacity with our partners so that we're always increasing how many wheelchairs we give out and supplying and supporting these individuals.

We want to create a sustainable expectation of when the wheelchairs will arrive so the waiting lists are shorter.

We know the need will always be there, but they know they can expect to receive one.

Nuka Hart and Night to Shine

Ric:Gotcha.

Well, you know, I have a special heart for what you're doing because I am involved in our church with an event called Night to Shine. Are you familiar with it?

Nuka:I'm very familiar with that.

This is the Tim Tebow Foundation. And Tim Tebow actually spoke at one of our events many years ago.

Night to Shine is an initiative that one of our distribution partners in Haiti, based in Cap-Haïtien in the north of Haiti, does every single year.

I actually almost participated in that event. It was in 2024, just last year in February.

And I missed it because of the unrest that happened in the country that caused me to have to leave there for my safety.

It was a whole explosion of problems, as you may have heard.

It's a fantastic event.

The way we're part of it is because the people who are our wheelchair beneficiaries—the children—get dressed up and get to have the beautiful experience of being highlighted for their beauty.

They get to feel like the center of attention with their tiaras and scepters, like a prom, right?

And it's wonderful because it shows a whole community that people with disabilities should be heralded.

They have their own inner and outer beauty.

They should not be marginalized but made to feel special.

So I just love that event.

Ric:You're making me tear up over here.

It's so special for us, you know, and as you've described, once people understand what it is—this night of wonderful fun—everybody wants to be involved.

It's like this community event that's contagious.

Nuka:Even though I didn't get to go, it was so much fun in the days leading up to it to help make the tiaras for the kids.

I got to see what they had done the year before and see the kids look at themselves in the mirror and never having seen themselves in that way, right?

Dressed up a little bit and looking outwardly more beautiful than they expected they would ever look.

It's just amazing.

I love that.

Growing Up in a Haitian Christian Family

Ric:Yeah.

So let's jump into your story because you've been leading this charge for the last eight years, is that what you said?

Let's go in the way-back machine.

Nuka:Oh boy. No, no telling ages, please.

Ric:So tell us about childhood. Did you grow up in a Christian household?

Nuka:I did.

I grew up in a Christian immigrant household. I'm first-generation American.

I was born on the East Coast in New York. My parents immigrated from Haiti.

We talked about Haitian Night to Shine, but that's where they came from.

They met in the States. They had me in New York.

They came to the United States like most immigrants do—for opportunity. They became citizens and had me, and they were both in the medical profession.

My parents are both doctors.

And so it's kind of wild that I'm now working for an organization that deals with patients and mobility issues. It's as close as I could get to being in their world.

They're both passed on now, but I did grow up in a Christian household.

It was part of a lot of the Haitian culture. I know there are other types of faith in Haiti, predominantly Catholic in Haiti. There's also a Protestant tradition that has grown over the years.

But I grew up from the very beginning going to church every Sunday. I was baptized. I did all that stuff.

And my mom died when I was really young.

My dad did since then remarry, but because of that trauma, I believe that my faith actually grew stronger.

When you go through something as a child, you have to grow up a lot faster.

And I feel like the growing-up process for those of us who have had faith from a young age or grew up in the church is being introduced to faith structures like church, Bible study, vacation Bible school, prayers or Scripture by our parents.

And then making a conscious decision at some point.

There's a fork in the road that happens, right?

Are you going to do what they said and follow what they were teaching? Or are you going to go in a different direction?

And that other direction you go in—is it more religious, more ingrained in faith, or is it completely different?

There is a point where it becomes more about your own choice and not technically the indoctrination of your parents.

And so for me, that process happened earlier because I believe I went through something.

For a lot of us who don't go through something at a young age, you do that through your normal cycle of growing.

It could be when you reach university, or you have your first child, or you start to leave and cleave to adulting.

So I've always had faith in the Lord. I've always held on to certain principles.

I found myself on my knees from a very young age, trying to figure out why things happened to me the way they did and holding on to words like hope and trying not to be anxious about my situation.

I think that's what's carried me through to this day.

When you go through a trauma when you're a young child, it can completely change the trajectory of your life.

But I believe that my faith sustained me.

I also think it's a little bit of the way I'm wired as a Haitian woman, or of Haitian descent.

It's the way I was raised—to be very resilient and to not only think about myself, that there are bigger problems, bigger issues out there.

And I think that's a trajectory I was on as well with my career: It's not all about me.

It's about the work that I'm doing and what I can do to give back using my talent.

Losing Her Mother at Seven

Ric:If I'm hearing you right, was there a gradual kind of maturing, or was there a pivotal moment?

Was there a time where you said, “Now I know this is real. Now I know Jesus personally”?

Some people have that. Others don't necessarily. They just kind of grow into it.

What was your situation?

Nuka:You know, when you lose your mom when you're seven years old, a lot of people can't even fathom that.

But there's definitely a moment of, “Why? Why did God do this to me? Why me? Why me? Why me?”

Which I think is a normal inclination for any child, as I look at it as an adult.

And so there definitely was that.

And then there was a lot of fear, right?

Because I came face-to-face with something that really roots us in our faith, which is our mortality.

What does it mean to then think beyond the now and the earth?

It's about the forever and the everlasting, which is your relationship with God.

I was forced to think about that earlier because here I am faced with a person who's never supposed to go away—my mom going away.

She had a disease, something happened, and now she's gone. This vibrant person.

So I think that was a pivotal moment, but it was still encased in some fear and uncertainty.

There was another pivotal moment for me, which was when I had my first child.

I remember I had just birthed my child, and I'm sitting there in the hospital with the little bed they give you. At the time, it was this clear kind of bassinet box, and the baby's next to you.

It was at some ungodly hour, like four in the morning, and I'm looking at this baby.

I'm sitting in the bed, and my husband at the time was either snoring on the futon next to me in the hospital room or gone.

And I'm just looking at the baby, and I'm thinking, “Oh my goodness, I'm responsible for this child.”

And then I remember tears streaming down my face and me realizing what my mom must have felt like leaving—knowing that she was dying and knowing that she was leaving behind two children.

And that's when God and I had another pivotal conversation about mortality and what I was here to do and Him being here.

It was earth-shattering to me because, again, backwards to seven years old: “Why me? Why did God do this?”

To now understanding, “It's not about me.”

This woman who was my mom had to leave me behind.

So it's really about what happened to her and the reality that she had to go through.

“Why, Lord, is this happening? I'm having to leave behind two children.”

Because then I got to see it from her eyes.

And I also got to have thanksgiving in that moment—thanking God for bringing me to a moment to be able to experience that.

Because I could have never had a child, right?

But I got to experience the beauty of having a child.

And there are a couple of other moments, but that's when I recognized that I really need Him.

If I'm going to be a good mom and I'm going to survive in this world for this child, my goal then became, “I am going to last more than seven years into this child's life.”

I need to pray to Him all the time because I need to make it for this child.

I don't want for this child to deal with what I dealt with in terms of not having my mom there.

And so that was a huge moment for me.

There are others, even for me coming to Free Wheelchair Mission—the day that I decided to go forth and answer His call to be in this capacity, leading the organization.

So I could go on and on.

You don't have all the hours in the day, Ric, to talk about my faith journeys.

Faith journeys are there. They're never ending. You're constantly working on them, right?

The Spiritual Practice That Grounds Her

Ric:We're talking with Nuka Hart, a leader whose faith is driving a mission to transform lives one wheelchair at a time.

Tell me, how old is your son now?

Nuka:Twenty-six.

Ric:Twenty-six! How cool is that?

So, in your spiritual journey, there are certain practices that ground you, that keep you connected with Jesus.

For you in your life, what are those spiritual practices that are a part of your life?

Nuka:My number-one practice—number-one practice, and it requires a lot of discipline—is praying with my husband every morning.

I do two things.

It's like a very personal thing here that I'm sharing.

Ric:I don't know why I'm sharing this because I don't really go to your job.

Nuka:So I'm actually the early riser.

And now that we're empty nesters, we don't have to go and bottle-feed or pick up a baby and change a diaper, right?

So in the quiet of the morning, I usually wake up and I thank God before he wakes up.

I look at him because I thank Him for him, right?

I thank the Lord for my husband, and I thank the Lord for allowing me to wake up.

I have more awareness of the value of waking up and the importance of that than I think a lot of people do because of what I went through as a child.

And I identified that way earlier.

Some people can think of it as morbid, but I think of it as a thanksgiving.

So that's the first thing I do.

It's just a very simple, “Thank You, God.”

And then the next thing I do is I wake him up, and we assess what our day is going to be.

As long as we don't have to dash, dash, dash, I try my very best to spend at least five to ten minutes with him praying.

We go through a specific type of prayer that we do.

It's a lot of intentions that we're speaking in terms of needs for others in our family that we know are struggling or dealing with something—our children, our extended family, our friends, and for each other.

So that's something that I feel is a constant.

I feel really bad when I miss it or when we're in different time zones and I miss it.

But that is one of the biggest practices that I have integrated into my life that grounds me.

Ric:So your husband's alarm clock, for starters, which is one.

Nuka:Whether he likes it or not.

Ric:Whether he likes it or not, which is great.

So what happens? You travel a lot. What happens on those mornings?

Nuka:Sometimes we call each other, and sometimes we do the prayer at another time of the day.

I've been known to pray with him while I'm driving somewhere.

We ask each other, “Is there something you want me to pray about?” and that sort of thing.

We're pretty good about it.

We have our favorite Scripture, of course, that we mutually love.

And this is my second marriage and his as well.

I think there's something very beautiful about that, too, because we have a deeper appreciation for the fact that the Lord is about multiple chances.

Hopefully, you don't have to do that in marriage because the idea of marriage is for it to not be a multiple-chance-giving thing—that you do it for life.

But when circumstances bear it to be that, that He does give you that grace is a big deal.

So we don't take it for granted.

What's the Scripture? Is it Philippians 4:6?

Ric:Okay.

Nuka:It's about not being anxious.

It's all about what I was talking about before.

It's about not being anxious and giving all your petitions and your requests to God with thanksgiving.

When God Makes the Next Step Clear

Ric:So, challenges.

You've already explained a couple of them.

What other challenges? Maybe your career challenges—things where along the way it seemed like things weren't going the right way and you were tempted to think that God wasn't listening somehow.

Tell me about one of those situations.

Nuka:Oh goodness.

I think all leaders have that—or all people in any capacity. You don't have to be in a leadership capacity.

You wonder, “Am I in the right place? Should I be doing something else? Is the grass greener somewhere else? Am I feeling valued?”

You definitely have those inner voices, right?

And your career is so critical.

It's the thing that you do in the majority of your awake hours, your alert hours, when you're alive on this planet.

So you better be doing something that you enjoy or that you find to be meaningful.

For me, there definitely was a time when I was working at another organization that I felt I was making a big impact with, but I was a little antsy.

I wasn't sure whether or not it was time for me to stay or go.

Ric:That was United Way, right?

Nuka:I had a leadership position.

I felt that I had an amazing team—an amazing, amazing team. I loved my team.

It's one of those things where you say, “Am I happy? Am I not?”

There were definitely ups and downs there.

But what was tugging at my heart was the fact that I wasn't doing enough.

I felt like I had shown and demonstrated that I could raise funds and do that well for the initiative where I was living.

But because of my heritage, I felt a bit guilty that I wasn't doing enough for Haiti and other countries around the world that I felt were suffering more.

And so when I was recruited for Free Wheelchair Mission, I kind of felt like I had a potential to do something more through Free Wheelchair Mission.

I thought, “Well, maybe this is it.”

But honestly, Ric, it was wheelchairs.

What did I know about wheelchairs?

And how come I hadn't heard this organization before?

And why would they want me?

And also, their headquarters was so far from where I lived.

Why would I go there?

And I still went on the interview.

There's a lot of reasons why I did that that I won't go into. It's a whole other story.

But by the time I finished the grueling interview, I walked away after kind of being volunteered to go on this interview, wanting the job and passionately wanting the job.

The minute I got in the car, I said to myself—out loud—“Oh God, what am I going to do? I really want this job.”

I'm sitting in the car by myself, going up the freeway back home.

And within 15 or 20 minutes, something like that, the recruiter called me and said, “They want you to come back. When can you come back?”

And I knew it.

I knew it even before he called.

I said, “You know, that was a really hard interview, but I just had this feeling they want me.”

And what am I going to do?

I did not expect that I was leaving this job now.

And it was really interesting because here I am feeling, “Well, what should I do? Is this right? Am I not sure?”

And God just laid it out for me in this mysterious, unexpected way.

He kind of forced my hand and made it abundantly clear.

And then I gave tons of notice. I think I gave like two months, three months' notice, something like that, because this was all in November or something.

And I started February 1st, eight years ago.

And here I am.

The complexity of leading an organization that was founder-led—which a lot of people do, right? They take over for a founder—is not easy.

And I knew from the beginning that that's what I was taking on.

It has had its ups and downs.

Taking Over from the Founder

Ric:Ric Hansen here on Amazing Greats with Nuka Hart, who shares her journey of following God's calling to serve the most vulnerable around the world.

So you were the first CEO? You took over for Don.

Nuka:Yeah, I took over for Don.

Technically, there were two other executive directors preceding me, and they didn't last for a long time for one reason or another. They were there for a short time.

And then Don went back into leadership for the organization for a couple of years.

He said to me, “I was a little nervous about bringing somebody else in again.”

I knew all of that going in, which I really, really, really appreciate.

It's the worst thing when you get a job, you take on a job, and nobody tells you all of the things behind the door—behind door number one, two, three and four, right?

I was told that it would be new.

It would be new for the team, it would be new for Don, and it would be new for our supporters to have somebody other than Don leading.

People would also be a little skittish about whether or not it was going to work because it didn't always work before.

So that was a big undertaking.

And Don is a fantastic person.

So also bringing on a new individual with new ideas, a woman coming from a different background—all of these things could also be complex.

But I've had from the beginning his trust.

And yes, we've gone through our ups and downs, but I've had his trust, the leadership's trust in terms of our board of directors.

And over time, I've built the trust of the team.

I hope I've earned it.

And I hope I've earned the trust of our supporters.

I hope I'm showing them that what I called before the nucleus of what Free Wheelchair Mission is—the essence of it—is still important and vital for us to maintain.

While we may hone it a little bit differently, and we may evolve in some regards to be more efficient or cost-effective or embrace the times we're in, keeping true to the values and maintaining the integrity of the mission has been my personal mission and my promise to Don.

How Does God Speak to You?

Ric:Stepping back just one step here, because I'm always intrigued by how God speaks to people.

You said that was a clear indication at that time.

Is there an audible voice for you, or is it just like a knowing?

How do you experience the call of God?

Nuka:Well, I have an art background. I studied art, so I have a lot of visuals in my brain.

Visuals—as they say, my first language in French—tableaux, right? Tableau.

I see things in imagery in the way I think.

My husband tells me, “Your dreams are so colorful,” when I tell him about a dream I have.

So when I think about what God says to me, I don't think about it just in words.

I think of it in paintings and pictures.

And I sometimes look for signs.

I used to even look at an image of my mom, and I used to say, “God, move her eyes so that I could know whether or not…”

And, of course, the eyes would never move, right?

But yeah, I mean, I do have the audibles.

I told you about one when I was in that car coming up the freeway, and I feel like it was very clear.

I was having a conversation saying, “Oh God, oh God, I really want this job.”

And then all of a sudden the phone rings.

I felt like—you can call it a sign, you can call it that God made the phone ring, whatever you want to say. People will poke at that.

But I'll tell you, I was not expecting to work at a wheelchair-focused nonprofit in Orange County, with headquarters there and touching globally, having a global reach that I never expected.

God did that, right?

And I certainly wasn't expecting that the very first wheelchair that I gave out—

I can tell you that story.

The First Wheelchair: A Full-Circle Moment in Haiti

Ric:Oh, I love it.

Nuka:It was in Haiti.

People would say, “Well, of course you gave it out in Haiti. It's your country of heritage.”

And I would say, “Actually, I was supposed to give out my first wheelchair in Vietnam.”

At the time, Vietnam was our number-one country where we were distributing.

That was the plan.

After I had been here for nine or ten months and was sinking my teeth into the mission, I would finally go out in the field and see the work.

We planned the trip.

I can't recall what happened, but something happened. We had to cancel the trip. Something with the partner, maybe it was weather. I'm completely blanking.

And I was a little bit dismayed and frustrated.

“Oh, darn. I needed to see this partner.”

I remember meeting with Don. We were meeting one-on-one one day, and he says, “When are you going to get out there? When are you going to get out there and see the work?”

I said, “I don't know. This trip for Vietnam got canceled…”

And he looked at me and said, “Just get on a plane and go to another country then.”

And I just looked at him.

I said, “Oh, right. I'm leading this organization. I guess I could kind of do that.”

And he said, “Where do you want to go? Why don't you go to Haiti?”

That's where, you know—

And that's how it happened.

So I went to Haiti, and we organized this trip for me to have a solo trip to meet our amazing partner, Food for the Poor, there in the capital.

At the time, it was a lot safer than it is today.

And my first wheelchair I gave out was to a boy who had suffered tragically the loss of his leg in the earthquake that happened in 2010.

So now I'm getting to him in 2018, eight years later, where he had waited for eight years to receive a wheelchair.

He had an amputation. He had been walking around using crutches, exclusively, or crawling—dragging himself.

They lived in a really hard part of the capital.

And here I am seeing this as the first child, the first person I get to put in a wheelchair.

It just was another God moment because I'm like, “Oh my gosh, if my parents had immigrated, I could have been his mother.”

What would be the difference between me and that mother?

Not much.

He came home from school like my kids do at four o'clock, and then this earthquake hit, and boom—his life changed.

There's no difference between an earthquake happening in California, where I live, and this mom in Haiti.

The big difference only is the lack of resources and the challenge that there was in the infrastructure in that country.

So it was a beautiful moment for me.

And then I went to visit my dear, sweet cousin and his wife, who live there.

I remember showing them the photo of this young man that day.

And they asked me, “Where were you when you gave this wheelchair?”

I explained it.

And his wife—I'll never forget it—says, “Wait, I know that boy.”

I said, “What?”

She says, “I see him going to and from school all the time because it's on my way to work.”

And she described him to a T.

It was just so affirming.

And then they affirmed what our partner was doing there.

So it was just a full-circle moment.

I had such pride that I was able to demonstrate the impact that we're making in a visual way for them, for something that they had suffered trauma through as well, having been a part of that time of the earthquake in Haiti.

And I think they were proud of me that I did that work.

Yeah, that was a big moment.

“It's Not About the Missionary. It's About the Mission.”

Ric:Yeah, and now there's 1.5 million of those moments around the world.

And you're in charge. You're the one that's kind of making it all happen.

Nuka:Well, I will say you and your team—let's say that 1 million percent, Ric.

Because I tell them it's not about me, and it's not about Don.

I tell them all the time. Some of them roll their eyes, I know.

I tell them all the time:

“It's not about the missionary. It's about the mission.”

We need to work together, and we need to do our work so well that we aren't the entity that's necessary for the work to take place.

So my job is to bring them all together, to figure out ways strategically for them to work effectively, to challenge, to push.

But I am reliant on them to execute, to come up with ideas, to push me a little, right?

And to make it happen.

I need to know that that's happening and that I'm not required for that to happen.

I'm not doing my job well if I'm necessary.

A Faith-Based Organization

Ric:Wow. That's a great idea.

I hadn't heard it put quite that way before, but that's incredible.

So of the team, how many—I mean, is everybody Christian? Or are they kind of Christian-ish? How does all of that fit in?

Nuka:I have no idea.

Ric:Yeah.

Nuka:So we're not a church. We're faith-based.

We do not have a litmus test or requirement—and we can't legally—for Christian-ish, Christian, not Christian.

But everybody has their eyes wide open that our mission is faith-based, that we have a motivation to do this work that is Jesus.

It's in our faith mission statement.

We're very transparent with people about that in job descriptions, and we ask them if they're comfortable with that.

We also pray in meetings, and we pray over our wheelchair recipients.

And we work with partners that are very religious, and we obviously attract people in our supporter base and stakeholders that are very religious.

Prayer Is Part of the Mission

Ric:Today on Amazing Greats, I'm talking with Nuka Hart, the CEO of Free Wheelchair Mission, who's bringing mobility and hope to people around the world.

You do that as a group, so the team is all together in those scenarios?

Nuka:When we distribute wheelchairs, you mean?

Ric:No, no. When you pray for your wheelchair recipients.

Nuka:Oh, yeah.

There's lots of different ways we pray at Free Wheelchair Mission.

We have, let's call it, the modern way of praying.

We have an instant messaging channel on Slack where we have a prayer group going, and we post our prayers in the Slack channel and share.

It could be a prayer for a recipient that we hear about, a distribution partner who's facing a challenge, a team member who needs prayer, or a praise report.

We have our board of directors that pray together once a month to pray for all of these things I just listed and more.

They are required to be Christians.

It is a requirement of our board that they sign a statement of faith.

And then in meetings, depending on the meeting, right? It could be a small team meeting, a leadership meeting, it could be a group meeting.

We'll break off in prayer.

Sometimes we are praying for our wheelchair recipients, but we're also praying for our partners.

We thank God for the country we're in.

We thank God for our safety because we're going into all these weird places, right?

So there's lots of prayers.

And sometimes it's very, “Please, God, let the resources come so we can keep doing this work.”

Who Pays for the Wheelchairs?

Ric:And where do the resources come from primarily? Is it individuals or big corporations?

Nuka:Yeah, we have a variety of places that they come from, different segments.

I'm really proud that the majority of our funds come from individuals.

I think I'm proud of that because we're less dependent on principally institutional giving, which could come and go depending on economies or changes with the wind politically, that sort of thing.

So we do depend a lot on households and individuals.

But we do have a core of support from corporations, from churches, and from foundations or private foundations.

We don't receive any government grants or government funds.

That's not new. That's just been the way it's been.

It's been our little policy, and I'm kind of grateful.

Because then, with the wind flowing one way or the other, you don't have to be dependent on that to a point where it's detrimental to your plans if it changes.

And our supporters are all over the world.

That's a beautiful thing.

Predominantly, obviously, in the United States because of where we started, but we have support from all over the world.

One Dollar Can Make a Difference

Ric:You know what I love about the way you generate revenue, and a lot of it, and what you desire to do, is the fact that it is so accessible to anyone to be a participant.

When you consider that a wheelchair costs in the neighborhood of a hundred bucks, everybody's got a hundred bucks to put somebody in a wheelchair.

And what a great, wonderful thing to feel proud about for a donor.

Nuka:And even if they don't have a hundred bucks, they may have a dollar, right?

Ric:There you go.

Nuka:And I tell people all the time, I would prefer to have a million people giving me one dollar than to have one man or woman giving me a million-dollar check.

Because if I can move one million people to give me one dollar, that means one million people cared enough to part with that one dollar for me and what I'm trying to achieve and what I'm just introducing them to.

And then it won't be about me.

It's about the mission.

How Can People Help?

Ric:Yeah, perfect.

And so at this magic moment, we should say, how do we do that?

How do we do that?

Nuka:How do you do that?

Well, you know, there's this thing called the internet these days.

Ric:I love that internet. It's so good.

Nuka:So I tell people, look us up and see if you like us, right?

Read our stories. Watch our videos. Go to our website. Go to our social media pages.

And when you go there, I'm convinced that you're going to feel tugged at the heart and motivated to give or do something.

And so they should then act with that and go to that donate button and give.

Or feel inspired enough to engage with us in a different way as well—to see how they can volunteer, participate in an event, and do more.

Introduce us to someone.

Or just learn about our new ideas, like our new wheelchair that we've just launched, or anything else.

Closing

Ric:Well, Nuka, this has been absolutely an inspiring and wonderful story.

The time that you've spent, the energy that you put into it, and the glow in your face when you talk about what you're doing is just magical.

And I really appreciate the time.

But we ran out of time.

You said 40 minutes. I hope we can talk 40 past 40 minutes, right?

Nuka:That's quick. I love it.

Thanks so much, folks.

Ric:What an uplifting conversation with Nuka Hart.

Her story reminds us how powerful faith and action can be.

To find out more about Free Wheelchair Mission, visit www.freewheelchairmission.org.

Thanks for hanging out with us on Amazing Greats, and we'll see you next time with another story of God at work.---