About Us
The Terence Mills Trust (T-M-T) was started in memory of Terence Mills as a family Trust Fund, after he pasted away in 1998. Father to Adrian, Paul and Jacqueline Mills, husband to Eileen and son to Dorothy and Eric, Terry played a major role in all our lives. After Adrian had had a parachute accident in 1989, Terence and Eileen were told that their son would not be allowed to attend a rehabilitation centre here in the UK as he had had his accident in the USA. Adrian was later discharged from the isolation ward he was being held in and returned home and undertook his own rehabilitation with the help of his father. It was later decided that a Trust Fund should be set up to help people like Adrian who have had accidents and were going through life changing events. This would also be available to the families that were supporting and caring for those individuals going through the rehabilitation system, as Terry and Eileen had had too.
So who was Terence Mills? A sportsman since he was a child, Terry represented Portsmouth UK in Athletics and Swimming. He was a family man who dedicated his life to working hard as a printer and sales manager to provide for his family and give them the future he never had. He and Eileen later opened Sports Shops in Drayton near Portsmouth and others in Emsworth and Crewkerne which would become his legacy. It was later realised that his interests in play and sports had helped us to see that it was this that helped Adrian to rehabilitate himself and to become a pioneer in the areas of play and sports therapy and progressive rehabilitation.
It was decided that the first project that the trust would undertake was to look at the problems facing the people that Adrian had met in The Gambia in Africa which has become the very successful “Wheels for Africa Appeal”. The Appeal was set up to send second hand wheelchairs out to the West Coast of Africa to help people with disabilities and the rehabilitation system.
The Wheels for Africa Appeal has gone from helping athletes with a disability in The Gambia to sending wheelchairs out to Nigeria and Ghana to help with their Rehabilitation & Paralympic programs in West Africa. It was evident that the people with a disability in Africa were not only seen as a minority group but through superstition and stigma some people were being totally ignored. With no benefit system to speak of, these individuals were usually found begging and surviving on the streets.
In the UK and the West we have seen how a wheelchair can benefit someone’s life by helping them to become mobile. It first improves their chances of survival in a challenging environment and secondly provides them with the opportunity of a healthy successful life. The light wheelchair provides the essential tool for social mobility and integration for a person with a disability excluded by their society. This is seen not just as a benefit to physical health but also as a social benefit allowing that person to be no longer an outcast from their community, allowing them to play an important and active role in their forming their society future, hopefully giving them the voice that will allow all disabled people to gain equal opportunities and equal rights equivalent to their able bodied counterparts.The NGOs in Africa struggle to provide enough facilities and the disabled persons groups are often the hardest hit when it comes to cut-backs and withdrawal of Government Money.
The Trust’s interest is in improving Rehabilitation, Social integration and Regeneration. The Mission Statement for the Charity is; “Improving Abilities and Mobility through Rehabilitation and Regeneration”. This is aimed at social and physical mobility, personal improvement and integration. Belief, ability and activity being key, put together with communication, inclusion and participation, essential for sustainable development.
Wheels for Africa looks to provide improved Health and Mobility for the benefit of those people with a disability on the west coast of Africa.
Rehabilitation and Regeneration – Recreation and Recuperation.
Our Aims and Objectives :
- Promote and enhance equality of opportunity through employment, education and skills training of people with a disability, particularly the young and those at a disadvantage.
- Encourage sustainable development by improving the physical environment and living conditions for people with a disability, including sports and recreational facilities.
- Promote good practice with local authorities concerning design for integration and equal access.
- Improve care and support for people going through rehabilitation for new and existing conditions.
- Promote initiatives toward making improvements in rehabilitation for the benefit of ethnic or minority groups.
- Continue to investigate and promote the research into Spinal Cord regeneration.
- Enhance the quality of life, health, wellbeing, and the capacity of people with a disability through the use of alternative/complementary therapies i.e. play and sports.
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