A Whirlwind for the World: An Interview with Ralf Hotchkiss, Whirlwind Wheelchair International

MDG #8: Develop a global partnership for development

Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI) works to make it possible for every person in the developing world who needs one to obtain a wheelchair that will lead to maximum personal independence and integration into society. In order to fulfill this mission, WWI seeks to give wheelchair riders a central role in all of its projects and activities. Ralf Hotchkiss started developing wheelchairs for use in developing countries in the late 1970s.  In 1989 he founded the Wheeled Mobility Center at San Francisco State University, which changed its name to Whirlwind Wheelchair International in 1997, after its signature chair design. Currently, Ralf Hotchkiss is the Whirlwind Chief Engineer and the principal instructor in Whirlwind wheelchair design class. Among many other honors and awards, Ralf received a MacArthur Foundation Award for his work in 1989. MIUSA spoke to Ralf about the lessons he has learned in over twenty years of working as a pioneer in disability and development.
 
“There was a group of disabled students we worked with in Zambia, mostly homeless students, who were doing wheelchair repair on a large number of broken chairs that had been shipped from Finland. In a couple of years they had learned that their success at keeping these fancy aluminum chairs with machined parts running in Zambia was very low and that in order to make them work they had to make a lot of their own parts. Once they were already making replacements for the critical parts like the front fork, the hub and axle, and the footrest, it was actually cheaper to make the whole chair locally than to continually mix and match all these widely assorted imported secondhand chairs.

“So they went ahead and they developed wheelchair manufacturing and they’ve now made thousands of chairs. They support a shop with at least a dozen mechanics working steadily and they’re serving now as a training center for wheelchair builders from all over east Africa. They even have a little housing complex they’ve built now and little kids are running around in all directions. It’s a whole different scene; they’re no longer homeless.”

Whirlwind Wheelchair International is unique in that it equips its beneficiaries with the skills to build wheelchairs from materials found in their own countries, rather than providing charity wheelchairs that may or may not fit their recipients. Hotchkiss found that wheelchair users in developing countries were eager to dialogue with him about designing and building functional wheelchairs.  “Many of these people were already highly skilled in taking junker American chairs and rebuilding them until they worked really well. The teenagers I first started with in Nicaragua knew more than the whole U.S. industry put together about how chairs failed and how to reinforce them to make them stand up, because the chairs they were working on had broken in many ways and they had fixed almost all of the failures and found ways to prevent the problems from happening again. Their expertise was perfect for making our chairs much better. ”

Whirlwind Wheelchair engineers consistently share information with their colleagues in developing countries. Hotchkiss also stressed that it is vital to listen to the needs of end users. “We give full credit to every bit of information that comes from the field, both from the users and the builders” When we participate in [wheelchair producing] projects that aren’t working well, it’s often because some of the key players in the process are being ignored.

“Organizations that want to send wheelchairs and mobility aids to another country should ask disability organizations in that country what the people really need. More often than not they will find people saying, ‘That [imported] stuff is worthless, we have lots of these chairs, they’re in big piles behind our hospitals and our rehab centers, they’re rusting. We can’t get spare parts, they need too many spare parts, they’re not strong enough, and they’re not agile enough off road. And that’s not what we need. We need something much better. We need the equivalent of the best the world has to offer, not the worst.”

Organizations should evaluate their goals when doing disability projects, says Hotchkiss.  In the case of mobility equipment, instead of focusing on providing wheelchairs, organizations should focus on facilitating mobility.  “Here, we’re proud that we have provided dependable mobility to a good number of people.  These are chairs that our users tell us are working very well and are dependable enough to get them to school everyday, to get them to work everyday, to raise families with, to build houses with, to move right on and not just sit and wait for the next gift from up north.”

Contact:

Whirlwind Wheelchairs International
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, SCI 251
San Francisco, CA 94132-4163
USA  
Tel: 415.338.6277
Fax: 415.338.1290
E-mail: whirlwind@sfsu.edu
Web: www.whirlwindwheelchair.org