UK wheelchair charity exports to Africa

A Bristol-based charity which makes specially developed sports wheelchairs is expanding into Africa. The hope is that that the excitement generated by the London Paralympics will help give business an extra boost.

Motivation develops chairs for basket ball, tennis and racing to sell at more affordable prices in developing countries. It has supplied wheelchairs and training programmes to more than 135,000 people in 90 countries. It now has a distribution hub in Kenya, which serves East Africa.

Affordable chairs

Motivation business development manager, Jason Williams, said: “A racing wheelchair will cost around £3,000 in the UK and can be even more expensive for athletes in developing countries, who also have to pay for shipping.

“What we are doing is making the chairs more affordable so that increasing numbers of disabled people at grassroots can take part in some sort of sports.

“Not everyone is at a level where they need a top-of-the-range carbon fibre chair. They need something that is robust and easy to repair.

“The International Paralympic Committee supported the development of these sports wheelchairs, to enable the continued growth of the Paralympic movement.”

Motivation

Motivation developed from a student design project created by David Constantine and Simon Gue. The brief was to develop a wheelchair suitable for use in developing countries.

They founded Motivation with their friend, Richard Frost, in 1991 and opened their first wheelchair workshop in Bangladesh, soon followed by Poland, Indonesia and Russia.