This Spring, Brooklyn Bennett will travel to Kenya with the Wheels Project which is a project directed by her professors at The University of Oklahoma Health Science Center that takes occupational therapists, physical therapists, and students to evaluate wheelchair performance and usage in less-resourced settings around the world. On this trip, they will be assisting in wheelchair research and aiding in optimizing mobility devices by adjusting or fixing broken wheelchairs. They will also conduct research that will evaluate low-cost, high-functioning, durable wheelchairs, and their performance.
Brooklyn sees this opportunity as not only a tremendous learning experience but also the chance to continue her family legacy of impacting lives around the world with the gospel. A large focus of this trip outside of research is to help break down the stigma of disabilities in the culture. Often the cultural attitude toward people with disabilities is that they are cursed and should be abandoned, but the call is for them to be seen, cared for, and loved deeply by God.