Cambodia
Three wheel chairs
Tricycles
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Motivation
was invited to address the need for wheelchairs for double above the
knee amputees and survivors of landmine injuries in Cambodia. With no regular supplies of tubular steel, the team designed a three-wheel wheelchair, named the Mekong, from locally available hard wood. The chair has three wheels to enable the user to get over rough ground more easily. A tricycle attachment was also produced which attaches to the wheelchair and allows the user to travel over longer distances more efficiently. The Mekong was selected as a finalist in the 1996 BBC Design Awards and has won world-wide acclaim following its selection as a Millennium Product. As well as the designers, the project team also included a therapist whose role was to work specifically on distribution. Organisations throughout Cambodia were contacted so that wheelchairs could be sent from the central workshop at the Jesuit Refugee Service to satellite workshops who could in turn distribute them throughout the country. To enable this distribution to take place the wheelchair was designed as a flat pack so that many more wheelchairs could be transported on the limited transport available. The workshop in Cambodia is currently our most productive being capable of manufacturing and distributing over 800 wheelchairs a year. |
Project
Dates |