The Pioneer Organization and the New Outlook Region Pioneers want to take this time to thank Connie and Gordon Hankins for their leadership and volunteer hours devoted to this very special project for physical challenged children. From all of us in Pioneering we thank you for your 26 plus years leading this project.

West Suburban Pioneer Club hasn’t had Monthly Club Meetings since they were suspended in March, 2020 due to Covid-19. So, I’m going to review the results for 2021 to bring everyone up-to-date on the Therapy Oriented Tricycle (TOT) Project.

Assembly and shipping of trikes went on as usual, with 7 being shipped out of state and 31 presented at our home workshop here in Naperville, IL. Those shipped out of state included 4 to CA and 1 each to OH, IN, and MN. Presented at our Workshop included 29 from IL and 1 each from IN and MN. All presentations were made in our garage or outside with everyone wearing face masks.

We had one major building event during 2021 with 10 volunteers building 25 TOT’s. We have been fortunate to have found a volunteer who is going to be taking over the TOT Project with Connie and I finally retiring after 26 enjoyable years of building trikes. Actually, I semi-retired 10 years ago with Connie taking over all responsibilities with me just helping out here and there.

The new Project Leader will be Elizabeth Bishop who lives in St. Charles, IL, only a half hour drive from us. She is retired and belongs to a bicycle club where she is hopeful of recruiting some volunteers. Our current volunteers will also be available. She will be using our current workshop for at least a year and possibly longer. She has been busy learning all aspects of the TOT project including assembly of back rests, foot containments and trikes. She is also getting familiar with the paperwork involving communication with clients, vouchering expenses/deposits, making presentations to TOT recipients, and preparing for the out-of-state shipping by FedX. She has applied for membership in the Pioneers. We are extremely happy to welcome her and to work with her as she serves the needs of our special needs children.

I would also like to announce that we will be working with a local teenager during 2022 to help him achieve Eagle Scout status. He will be the Project Leader of a group of volunteers, that he recruits, to build a quantity of trikes and raise funds for the project.

As I mentioned above, we shipped and presented 38 TOT’s during 2021. Our fund rasing for 2021 exceeded our expenses and the project is in excellent shape beginning our 2022 pioneer year. Our expenses were lower than normal because we had major expenses during 2020 for the TOT add-on components including foot containments and back-rest assemblies. During 2021 we reported 980 hours worked on the TOT Project. We are in good financial health and have not requested Grant money for several years. We are looking forward to the PAC getting us cut over from New Outlook Crossroads Chapter 135 to New Outlook East 160, hopefully during the first quarter of 2021.

Gordon: 630-355-7211 home ghankins99@aol.com
Connie: 630-841 4542 cell cmhankins42@yahoo.com
Elizabeth: 872-243-1177 cell eb60585@gmail.com

Gordon Hankins, Secretary
West Suburban Pioneer Club