On April 24, 1990, Tempo profiled David Constantine, a British photographer who had been paralyzed from the shoulders down eight years earlier in a diving accident. He was in Chicago to drum up seed money for a wheelchair factory in Bangladesh.
During his visit here, Constantine said that several months of travel after his accident convinced him that disabled people in Third World countries were in desperate need of affordable wheelchairs. So he began studying at the Royal College of Design, where he learned to manipulate a computer well enough to devise blueprints for a wheelchair that would cost a fraction of the going rate.
Constantine raised $125,000 during his tour of America, and today the factory in Bangladesh is up and running, selling wheelchairs crafted from rickshaw wheels and hand-bent bicycle frames for about $100-roughly 10 percent of what conventional models cost.
Since the success of their factory in Bangladesh, Constantine and his two partners have undertaken similar projects in Cambodia, Romania and Poland. Speaking from his home in London, Constantine, 32, said his experiences in these ravaged nations are “overwhelming at times. We’re going where the system is falling apart and the countries are just struggling to survive. Cambodia has many double amputees from all the land mines that are still there. It’s a very sad place, and Romania as well. There’s such a huge need.”
Constantine’s company, Motivation (a British charity affiliated locally with the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute), has grown to help meet the need, he said. “It’s not just three lads doing this anymore. We’ve become a proper organization. It’s quite amazing, really, the way it’s taken over our life.”