SMSU students Megan Olsem, Eli Horstman and Caleb Nilius used trackchairs to do field research on the university campus Thursday. The chairs came from a pilot lending program unveiled by the Action Foundation earlier this year.

MARSHALL — A pilot program for lending outdoor accessibility equipment is still taking shape, Audra Klinkner said. But while the Action Foundation’s Tow & Go program hasn’t officially launched, organizers are still helping area residents get outside.

“We’ve helped 22 users in the past two and a half weeks,” said Klinkner, the executive director of the Action Foundation. Tow & Go is still in its first phase, of “trying to figure out” what would work best for the program, she said.

On Thursday, a group of students doing research for an environmental science class at Southwest Minnesota State University traveled through part of the university grounds on trackchairs from the Tow & Go program. Megan Olsem, Caleb Nilius and Eli Horstman were able to go off the pavement in order to collect data – something they couldn’t easily do in their own wheelchairs.

“If we didn’t have these chairs, we would have had to go to a different part of campus” to collect data, Olsem said. “We wouldn’t have the same experience as everyone else.”

As the three students patrolled part of campus, they looked for evidence of birds colliding with windows in university buildings, and took notes.

“I’m just going to take pictures of the feathers we saw,” Horstman told group members, as they logged several feathers on the ground near a window.

Getting to do field work “makes science fun,” Olsem said.

The Action Foundation announced plans for the Tow & Go program this summer. The idea behind the program was to be able to lend mobility equipment, whether it was a trackchair or a handcycle, to individuals or organizations, Klinkner said.

In Phase 1, Tow & Go committee members have been working out important parts of the program like insurance coverage, Klinkner said. In the meantime, users have been signing liability waivers before using mobility equipment. On Thursday, the three SMSU students also got an explanation on how the controls of the trackchairs worked before they started their classwork.

“For the most part right now, everyone has been local,” Klinkner said of Phase 1 Tow & Go users. Mobility equipment has mainly been lent to people in Lyon and Lincoln Counties.

Having a free mobility equipment lending program would make a big difference in helping people get outdoors, Klinkner said. Otherwise, rentals could cost more than $100 a day for a single item, she said.

Klinkner said she anticipated the Tow & Go program would be in Phase 1 through about December or January. The Action Foundation has been working together with partners like Avera Marshall, and Klinkner said the Tow & Go program was also working to build partnerships with other national outdoor programs.