De­spite heavy rains, scores of peo­ple turned up to re­ceive life-chang­ing sup­port at a wheel­chair dis­tri­b­u­tion event host­ed by Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Janouras Cus­tom De­sign Ltd, Han­nah Janoura.

The busi­ness­woman and phil­an­thropist has now do­nat­ed more than 1,400 wheel­chairs over the years to those in need.

At the event, held at Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, Janoura shared her jour­ney of phil­an­thropy, which be­gan over three decades ago dur­ing her an­nu­al Christ­mas bazaars at the Hilton Ho­tel.

“I gave out, well, I’m sup­posed to give out 190 wheel­chairs to­day,” she said. “I held back 10 for fam­i­ly and very close friends, but I don’t know how many braved the rain to col­lect theirs. Still, 190 is the goal.”

What start­ed with do­na­tions to in­sti­tu­tions like Princess Eliz­a­beth’s Home and the Cas­cade School for the Deaf has grown in­to a na­tion­al out­reach ef­fort.

“About 30 years ago, I gave out chairs for the first time. It start­ed then, and I de­cid­ed to go big­ger — and now I am big­ger,” she said with a smile. “But I don’t want to go big­ger than this.”

Each wheel­chair, val­ued be­tween $1,200 and $1,500, is dis­trib­uted at no cost to the re­cip­i­ents, many of whom have been strug­gling with mo­bil­i­ty and have been un­able to af­ford one.

Grate­ful at­ten­dees ex­pressed deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ini­tia­tive, and Janoura was vis­i­bly touched by the sup­port.

“Every­one is very thank­ful. I’m hap­py to be here and to have all of you here, even though I nev­er ex­pect­ed a crowd with this kind of rain,” she said.

Af­ter pro­mot­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion on In­sta­gram and Face­book, over 100 in­di­vid­u­als reg­is­tered with­in a week. Ap­pli­cants were re­quired to present a doc­tor’s let­ter ver­i­fy­ing their med­ical con­di­tion- a step that led to some ten­sion.

“Some were abu­sive be­cause doc­tors were charg­ing $300 for let­ters,” Janoura ex­plained. “Oth­ers kept com­ing back two or three times with copied doc­u­ments. So, we had to put a sys­tem in place. It was very chal­leng­ing.”

On the day of the event, some still ar­rived with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion. Nonethe­less, Janoura said she re­mains com­mit­ted to help­ing where she can.