Team Members: Jacob Ruzevick - Maria Telleria - April Wachtel - Forrest Funnell - Sasha Brophy - Damien Acheson (Mentor) - Amos Winter (Instructor)
Who we are: A diverse group of MIT/Mass College of Art & Design students who seek to create a device that allows provide individuals with disabilities in developing countries an opportunity to maintain a small business from their wheelchair. The Small business team draws experience from many educational avenues including mechanical engineering, industrial design, and physics. We are very fortunate to be able to collaborate with wheelchair design and manufacturing experts from countries all around the world in order to create the best small business possible.
Our Motivation:
“Most people believe that a disabled person can not do anything without being helped which means they should depend on other people”
- Daniel Namkessa
Arusha, Tanzania
The community of wheelchair users in Africa face physical, social, and cultural challenges. Most individuals in wheelchairs are uneducated and illiterate because of the social confines their wheelchairs place them in. Furthermore, individuals in wheelchairs show a lack of vocational training. The challenges of being uneducated and not having vocational training arise from a multitude of reasons. The first is the lack of a wheelchair when the disabled person was young. Often times, individuals who cannot afford a wheelchair or cannot gain access to one are forced to stay inside their home most of the day. This not only affects their lives because they cannot attend school or learn a skill, but also further adds to the stigma that individuals with disabilities cannot be a functional part of society in Africa. Thus the community of wheelchair users needs a technology that can empower them to generate an income and be more respected in Africa.
The business of providing a small service such as phone cards or repair is a sensible job for wheelchair users in Africa because it does not require any education or vocational training, which is often missing in wheelchair users. Also, there is a major market for telecommunications for contacting others and repair for fixing broken goods. Furthermore, anything that is available in the local area can be sold from the wheelchair because of the tremendous versatility the desk and storage provide. This eliminates the need for traveling long distances over rough roads to get to a job or a specific customer. This is advantageous because wheelchair users often have trouble traveling great distances because of the lack of roads or poorly kept roads. Furthermore, these services can be provided to anyone, regardless of income.
Finally, the need for sustainable businesses to provide goods in markets is key to the design. Our storage attachment can be used to store a variety of goods, instead of focusing on an attachment that can only serve one product. In this way, there is an endless number of items that can be sold and services provided. For example, if the market for calling cards becomes saturated, the wheelchair user can simply sell another product.