The project provided appropriate wheelchairs and encouraged knowledge sharing among organisations that provide wheelchairs. It aimed to achieve an improved quality of life for wheelchair users, contributing to their survival, mobility, access to rights, and potential for sustainable livelihoods. Overall, the project was designed to minimise the detrimental effects of disability on the lives of poor people.

The project followed a three-year collaboration between Motivation and the Tanzania Training Centre for Orthopaedic Technologists (TATCOT). This was part-funded by a previous DFID Knowledge and Research programme. It developed a range of custom-designed wheelchairs for Africa, and established the world's first Wheelchair Technologists Training Course.

The project was planned through a process of active consultation with wheelchair users and disabled people's organisations (DPOs). Research conducted among wheelchair users in partnership with DPOs in Uganda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe shows that lack of access to an appropriate wheelchair is the key prohibitor to an improved quality of life.

The project outputs:

A simplified three-wheel wheelchair appropriate for rural environments; incorporated into the Wheelchair Technologists Training Course and national trainers trained in its production

Feasibility study into exporting the course to another accredited training centre in a low-income country (El Salvador, Cambodia or Vietnam)

Research trip to Zambia and South Africa and planning for a regional modular training programme in special seating for children

Third All Africa Wheelchair Congress in Zambia - an opportunity to share knowledge and experience between wheelchair and hand-tricycle producers

A wheelchair technology guidebook.