A small group of fourth-year industrial students at Carleton have partnered with CanUgan to co-create hand-cranked tricycles for people living with disabilities in the Kasese region of Uganda, according to a press release from the initiative.
The project stemmed from a visit to Kasese by Navin Parekh. He works with CanUgan, which was founded to help support people living with disabilities in the Kasese District of Uganda.
While in the area, Parekh said he met Biiara Gatrida, a talented artisan who was afflicted with polio. Working with a local workshop and a Canadian donor, a hand-cranked tricycle was procured, and a movement was born.
Carleton came into the picture when the Research, Education, Accessibility and Design (READ) Initiative at Carleton approached the Canadian government’s International Development Research Centre for funding. The end goal of the project is to create effective products, and hand cycles in particular that can be locally produced in Kasese for under $200, according to the release.
“The roads there are the worst things that you could imagine,” Parekh said.
Dean Mellway, acting director of the READ Initiative, echoed these sentiments.
“I’m in a $3, 000 wheelchair, and I had a difficult time getting around,” Mellway said.
Acting director of the School of Industrial Design Bjarki Hallgrimsson said the design constraints for the project were unique.
“The welder in Kasese is an artisan, and measures with his hands, so we had to be able to get into his mindset. There’s no factory or fixtures, all of his works are one-offs,” Hallgrimsson said.
To get an idea of how the tricycles were made, the students began making one themselves, with the same techniques and resources that are available in Kasese. Their goal is to improve upon the initial design, while incorporating local knowledge and skills into the final product.
Alyssa Wongkee is one of the students working on the project.
“[It] really has context, as you don’t get a lot of opportunity in school to work on a project that’s so real,” Wongkee said.
Fellow project member Ruby Hadley agreed. She said the project was “so big, and it feels really real to me. There’s this voice in the back of my head that said ‘you have to do good.’ Through this project, I’m learning how to do that.”
Stephen Field is the instructor overseeing the students. He said a key element in the project is that the tricycles be made locally.
“We made the conscious decision to have them locally produced, as we are trying to make them as sustainable as possible,” Field said.
In a testament to the quality of the local construction, Parekh noted that “55 tricycles have been produced to-date, and none of them have broken down.”
Looking ahead, the team will be hosting a lecture on Nov. 8 in conjunction with members of the Technology, Society and Environment Studies department at Carleton. They will also be travelling to Kasese in February next year as part of a cultural and design exchange.
“There are just so many misconceptions about disabilities and developing countries, and we want to help change that,” Mellway said.
