Paralysed mum and Ukrainian refugee she sponsors ‘expand world’ by climbing Snowdon in wheelchairs

A paralysed mum and the Ukrainian refugee she sponsors and lives with, who also has a spinal cord injury, have climbed Snowdon in their wheelchairs to raise £31,000 for charity in an “adrenaline-pumping” adventure the mother says “expanded her world”.

Jo Wright, 62, a retired IT worker from Basingstoke, Hampshire, took on the Welsh mountain earlier this month with Svitlana Tryfonova, 56, a former Paralympian who moved in with Jo in April 2022 after fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The pair were aided by a team of people who pulled their specially adapted chairs in a challenge to raise money for Back Up, a spinal cord charity that gave Jo back “her spark”.

As the mountain had strong winds that day, the teams were advised to avoid the summit and turned around as they reached within 200ft of it.

Jo, who admits she is “petrified” of heights, completed the climb in four and a half hours and said it was “exhilarating” to complete the feat with Svitlana.

Jo, who lives with husband David, a 64-year-old retired civil servant, and has three children – Lizzie, 29, Sally, 26, and Tim, 24 – said: “My overwhelming feeling in retrospect is one of relief. I’m absolutely terrified of heights and the adrenaline that was pumping in advance was pretty high.

“It’s incredible that we’ve been able to do it and, even after 12 years of living with a spinal cord injury, it’s a new way that my world has been expanded.”

In early 2022, Jo put in an application to sponsor a Ukrainian family to come to the UK and requested someone with a spinal cord injury as she has an accessible house.

She said: “About a week later, we were put in touch with Svitlana and she originally came over with her two boys. One of the boys has actually gone back but now her sister has arrived as well.

“My husband and I are delighted to sponsor someone with a spinal cord injury because it just seemed to make sense with the way our house is set up.

“I don’t think being disabled in Ukraine is very straightforward, a lot of safe bunkers and places where Ukrainians have been taking shelter is in places like tube stations, most of which are not accessible. To be stuck in a war is absolutely ghastly, and if you’re disabled, the options to become safe are very limited.

“It just seemed pretty obvious to us that given we could offer an accessible house, then we should sponsor somebody who also had a spinal cord injury.

“I hope it’s made life a little bit easier and a little bit more straightforward for her and her family to get used to being here.”

When Jo suggested the challenge to Svitlana, she said the 56-year-old was “eager” to take on the feat with her.

On June 30, the pair loaded up their car and travelled to Snowdonia in North Wales to make up two teams out of the 12 who were ascending the mountain as part of the Back Up challenge on July 1.

Jo said: “The team of people taking me up the mountain were immensely sensitive to the fact that I was really genuinely frightened of heights. My kids were with me and they were very worried that serious anxiety would kick in so they were really thoughtful as to how I was feeling.

“There were some parts where I had to be lifted up and I just shut my eyes and had to trust them. I was so deeply out of my comfort zone and I hate being out of control, but the team were incredible, many of whom are from our corporate sponsors, Shoosmiths.

“Svitlana did really well, her team were about 16 minutes quicker than us and she told me that she found it immensely exhilarating.

“She’s a six-time Paralympian so she’s not immune to challenges, but climbing a mountain is one of those things you just don’t think is possible in a wheelchair.”

Jo has been a wheelchair user since September 2011 when an abscess in her spinal column left her paralysed.

Learning to come to terms with her disability, Jo said it was spending time with spinal cord injury charity Back Up where “the light turned back on”.

She added: “When you acquire a spinal cord injury, your world becomes intensely small, it becomes the size of an NHS bed. For most of us, we spend our early days of spinal cord injuries staring at some NHS ceiling tiles and your world really cannot get any smaller than that.

“Perhaps you get to the point where you’re healthy enough that they try and hoist you into a wheelchair, and then you start mobilising a little bit, and your world perhaps gets as big as the ward or maybe as big as the rehabilitation facility. That is still incredibly small.

“To my mind, that was where Back Up really kicked in as a charity, for me, because what they did was show me how to use a wheelchair and then I went on a course and we did that sailing, kayaking, zip wires, swimming and all sorts of stuff that made me realise that my world could be made bigger again.”

Despite wanting to take part in the challenge to give back to the charity, Jo said that the experience of climbing Snowdon has “expanded” her world.

She said: “After being paralysed for 12 years, I thought I was doing this challenge to help Back Up but actually, this was just another instance of Back Up doing what it has always done which is to gently push me outside of my comfort zone, and once again, it has gently expanded my world.”

For Jo’s fundraising page, visit: www.thepush.backuptrust.team/campaigns/Mission-Possible