Looking for a Bongo to help my wheelchair rugby club

[Nick65]

OK, I have an incredibly cheeky thing to ask. I've was a Bongolier in Poole for many years and loved Oingy Boingy, sadly I got rid of him and got myself a Motability Car. It was alright, nothing exciting about it, no character or anything.

In that time though I have set up a Wheelchair Rugby Club in Poole, called The Dorset Destroyers Wheelchair Rugby Club and it's going really well. We are the top club in the country and are unbeaten. But I need to be able to get to more disabled people across Dorset and the South of England and to be able to transport the rugby wheelchairs to various matches for the players. As you can imagine, if you have a spinal cord injury and use a day chair, plus getting to a venue and taking a rugby wheelchair as well....it's not a good thing to try and do!!!

So I need to get a vehicle (Bongo) which I and many of the players would be able to drive (As it's an auto, and we'd have hand controls) to various matches events etc and to remove 75% of the seating so we can take up to 8 rugby chairs at a time.

This is the problem though.....we have no sponsors, I think we are the only club in the UK or maybe Europe who don't have one as we are run as a bunch of mates. So I'm looking for a Bongo or something similar which is an automatic so we can get it converted to hand controls and it will also need to be FREE! Yes we really are desperate and need something to help us promote the sport and to help disabled people get access to this great sport of ours.

So if you know anyone (Yes, it is a long shot) that has a Bongo/Nissan Elgrand sort of thing who would donate it to the club, we would be more than happy to advertise whatever you wanted on the side of the van (Within reason of course lol)

I know it's a ridiculously long shot sort of thing, but if you don't ask, you don't get. We've applied for funding, but been turned down because they said we could get funding for a manual van......but none of us can drive manually, we use autos with hand controls so we have to have something like a Bongo which can be converted (For free by a local company) and will be given a full make over for free by another company to put in ramps/bars for transferring from wheelchair into drivers seat.

Long shot, but do you know of anyone who would be able to help.

Cheers Nick www.thedorsetdestroyers.co.uk/

[Bob]

For moving the chairs it might be worth considering a trailer.

Good luck, and well to you and your team.