Nait letter

My name is Mel Gearing. I am happily approaching the Digital Media & IT Team at Nait for the Capstone Program and asking permission and for assistance to help one of my closest and dearest friends whose name is Timothy Parnett. His friends call him Tim.

Tim has been actively working on a road safety project, he personally created on behalf of the public to bring and raise awareness for a seemingly small tear in our Alberta Roads System.  He has given his project the name 'mightywheels', (one word, please and thank you). The tear in our Alberta Road System is our sidewalks and accessible pathways within the city for people who require assistance when using these roads, sidewalks, paths, etc. within the city.

The tear I refer to is the visual cracks we see or trip on when using our roads and sidewalks that is causing accidents and can cause damaging consequences to people using wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers. Tim has been and is campaigning continuously to prevent these foreseeable accidents and to make our city a safer and easier place to access and while he has his sights on assisting people with wheels; let us not forget, it also benefits people without disabilities. Tim has been in a wheelchair for a considerable amount of time and has been a witness to account being hurt physically due to falling over in a wheelchair because of cracks in our sidewalks and within the city’s accessibility areas which is what prompted this project to be a part of the solution for everyone and for the betterment of the whole.

He has been successful thus far drumming up awareness with his Blog, News Interviews, TV coverage, and Social Media, talking to everyone he can and managed to put a team of helpers together but has reached a standstill due to certain tasks that require knowledge and expertise in the industry to propel his project to its full potential. We are asking for your help to put together a website and upgrade his blog with proper images, links to other wheelchair and government sites and/or whatever Nait can assist with is incredibly appreciated and we are forever grateful.

My email is melgearing@gmail.com and my cell number is 780-246-2164. I have also included this letter of help as a word attachment in case someone needs to print it. 

TIm Parnett's email is parnetttim@gmail.com and phone number is 780-937-2802. Blog is mightywheels.ca

 I have included personal words from Tim as well. J

Hi, my names Tim Parnett, I'm an independent advocate with a team of various helper, just trying to help people who use wheels, I created Mightywheels.ca Canada's first wheel accessibility team. We stand up for everyone, we bring attention to problem area's in your community, so everyone can access this beautiful city. This free service can be used by anyone, parents pushing baby strollers, people using walking aids or wheelchairs like my self. Our mission is to help bring much needed attention to difficulties people face every day. We want equal accessibility, so we can all access our beautiful city. I am hoping to raise awareness for the struggles that people with wheels face everyday. We'll appreciate any help that comes our way.

I could not do this without my team of helpers.

Other things I have started doing were various interviews, one being with Transitions, (a non-profit support agency) … I did a major presentation for them explaining about Mightywheels and what we’re trying to do. An interview with AMI-TV: at the Tea place about the accessibility of businesses and what they have done to improve it. I partnered up with Zachery Weeks for a Stop Gap video, describing wheel accessibility and how “Stop-Gap” is needed in Edmonton. I have also done 10 or so accessibility evaluations on video and then posted them onto my social media outlets. I’d really like you to view my projects on: Mightywheels.ca

Despite the many things I have accomplished so far, I’ve had many challenges and obstacles. 
-being kicked out of businesses
-people not taking me seriously
-having to find transportation to do interviews
-being limited to assessing my area

Things I want to do in the future… 
-working on my book
-assess other areas for accessibility
-work with the city as a accessibility advisor
-I want to ride the city’s ETS to all my evaluations/ videos recording all my journeys available to watch on my blog.

More who know me and what mightywheels.ca does, the more people we can help, the better. :)