Mario gets his new carrito on Tuesday.

[I sent the following to all those for whom I had email addresses - which wasn't that many who participated in the swarm]

Thanks to your warm generosity,  Mario will have his cart!

I am in the very last stages of prepping his car.  It is in my garage so Mario has not seen it yet.  He is out of town visiting relatives at the moment and will return March 31st.  On April 1st at 1pm I am going pick up Mario in my car and take him to Perry's Fish and Chips, the chippie where we had the fundraiser.  At about 1:20pm, I am going to get the cart from my garage and drive it to Perry's where we will hand over the keys.

You are all cordially invited to Perry's to join in the event.  It is Perry's normal menu - no donations this time.  
There might be one or two who cannot make it, so we will record the event and slap it on YouTube.

Thank you all so much for thinking of Mario.  We ended up raising almost $20,000MXN(Mexican pesos) [$1,500 USD  or  920GBP].  Of that we have spent $17,000MXN.  This has paid for new batteries, new brakes, new tire, new chassis, new battery supports, new seats, new LED lights and lots of other little stuff (to pimp his ride a little).

So we have a surplus of $3,000MXN. What I plan to do with this is dependent on another initiative.  Someone in this group contacted a solar energy company to see whether they can offer a solar energy solution for charging the cart, and so I am talking with them about what they can do for Mario.  I had heard that charging the cart might put Mario's family in a much more expensive consumer category, so we want to avoid that.  Solar companies usually have a charitable arm where you buy the equipment and they provide the labor.
I also want to hold a little in reserve for any surprises we find when Mario starts to use the cart.  I haven't really taken it around and about yet - so there might be a few issues uncovered - hopefully nothing major. If there are no surprises and solar is beyond our reach, I will donate the rest to Niños Incapacidados.

Hope to see you at Perry's on Tuesday.

Phil

Sounds like a great thing happened . . . but who is Mario and what is his cart for?   

Pogo wrote:Sounds like a great thing happened . . . but who is Mario and what is his cart for?    

Mario got sick and lost major use of his legs. His cart is his legs. His cart failed the batteries went bad so we raised money to rebuild his cart and give him his
mobility back and that's the story.

Z

Ah! I see. Well, as I said, it sounds like a great thing happened.

Pogo:

It might help your understanding to read: http://www.insidelakeside.com/t11268-mario-s-cart-is-ready-swarm-19-update. This has been an ongoing project and is probably a bit confusing when stepping in at the tail end?