A team of employees at Q’Straint recently rebuilt and delivered an inclusion swingset to Bright Horizons Center, a special-needs school in Pompano Beach, Fla. Photo courtesy Q’Straint

A team of employees at Q’Straint recently rebuilt and delivered an inclusion swingset to Bright Horizons Center, a special-needs school in Pompano Beach, Fla. Photo courtesy Q’Straint

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A local special-needs school recently received a newly renovated inclusion swingset from wheelchair securement supplier Q’Straint.

The decision to rebuild the swingset for Bright Horizons Center came after Q'Straint’s annual employee visit to the school, in which they learned that the school's swingset was out of service, according to a news release from Q’Straint. The company assembled a team of volunteers for the renovation project, which took several months to complete. The set was delivered to the school in November 2019.

“If I had the opportunity, I would do this project all over again,” said Ed Cardona, Q’Straint’s senior product innovation engineer. “It’s a great feeling knowing that you were part of something that made a difference in the lives of these kids.”

A wheelchair inclusion swingset is designed to allow both ambulatory and mobility device users to swing together safely while facing each other, according to Q’Straint. To rebuild the set for Bright Horizons Center, the Q’Straint team had to take the swingset apart, fix the broken parts, send it to a sandblaster and then a powder coater, reassemble it, send it out to a painter, and transport it back to the school.

The set for Bright Horizons Center has reportedly become an entertaining and therapeutic way for all the students to interact with each other.

Shown here is Jorge Torres, one of Q’Straint’s engineer technicians who helped renovate the inclusion swingset. Photo courtesy Q'Straint

Shown here is Jorge Torres, one of Q’Straint’s engineer technicians who helped renovate the inclusion swingset. Photo courtesy Q'Straint

“This whole project was touching for me and turned out to be one of the best moments of my life,” said Jorge Torres, one of Q’Straint’s engineer technicians who helped renovate the inclusion swingset. The company said that the project was “extremely rewarding” for Torres since his daughter has autism.

Q’Straint is a longtime community partner with Bright Horizons Center. Over the years, the school’s students have participated in a Q’Straint apprentice program where they learn vocational skills by working on various projects, such as sorting different pieces of wheelchair securement equipment, packaging them into bags, and then labeling them.

In other recent news, Q’Straint/Sure-Lok announced a partnership involving trade show promotions with All Wheels Up, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes airline wheelchair securement.

In the partnership, the wheelchair securement supplier will match every $5 to All Wheels Up, for anyone who visits the Q’Straint trade show booth and participates in the Elements Matching Game — an arcade game based on the periodic table, according to a news release from the company. The promotion will kick off at the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA) Annual Conference and Expo, held from March 3 to 5 in Daytona Beach, Fla.

For a list of Q’Straint’s participating promotional trade shows, go here.

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