MEND, New Zealand

Rob Buchanan, founder and director of MEND: Mobility Equipment for the Needs of the DisabledA couple of years ago one of the World Challenge entries was by MEND which had set up small workshops in very isolated villages in Nepal to make artificial limbs out of aluminum cans and discarded plastic.  The mandate of MEND – Mobility Equipment for the Needs of the Disabled, is 'to help disabled children and adults become mobile, independent and trained in skills that can lead to employment, and so achieve dignity in their communities'.
Imported prostheses are  too expensive and too rare, generally children in remote areas who lose limbs are left just to get on with it.
 
MEND is based in New Zealand and now has workshops and centres in Nepal, India, several African countries and Fiji, all to do with achieving mobility by local initiatives and means.    The brief video on the World Challenge site shows a pile of cans being fed into a mould where they will melt and come out as a leg: lightweight, with attachment points for straps and attachments.  Could it be simpler? yet how much invention and testing went into this process so that it was safe for the people in the workshop.  There is a committment to these low-tech manufacturing processes that are sophisticated beyond anything we make in our wealthy country.   

In this next issue of On Site, which is about small things, we have one article by a young architect, Peter Osborne, who, in building a folding bookshelf/storage unit found himself limited not by his imagination, but by his skill with plywood and saws.  The other is by architect Ron Wickman who, because his father was in a wheelchair, sees all architecture in terms of its accessibility.  He makes the very valid point that in handing out awards for amazing buildings, we never let a ramp get in the way of a grand entrance. 

So, two issues: appropriate technology and human rights.  Is this about architecture?  Absolutely, it is about design.  Our culture medicalises disabilities instead of seeing them as opportunities for useful design thinking.  When I was pushing my elderly aunt up and down hills in her 2-ton wheelchair – it was practically uncontrollable – it occurred to me then that surely there was a better way to do this.  Watching the amazingly designed and engineered chairs and limbs on display in the Paralympics right now, it is evident that there is.  Now this engineering and manufacture has to be made accessible.