OUR PROGRAM

Our work starts with wheelchairs — we manufacture low-cost products that are designed specifically for the context we work in, and we give new life to valuable equipment from the US that hasn’t seen its last days.

Life changes forever the day a person receives a wheelchair. Suddenly new possibilities for employment, education, health and inclusion are reality. That’s why we want to be there not just on that day our clients receive their wheelchairs, but in the days after too, ensuring that our other services complement their newfound freedoms with education, resources and support.

UCP Wheels builds programs that coordinate between governments, communities and individuals to provide wheelchairs ethically, and to oversee clinical training, policymaking and advocacy, sports activities, therapy and support groups. Our focus is on developing programs that approach disability services comprehensively, and which raise the quality of life for people with disabilities and their family members dynamically.

Our programs address different aspects of life with a disability in order to increase access to mobility, to promote a more positive, visible role in communities and to amplify the voice of the disabled population in government.

Our programs work respectively to build up a local market for the manufacturing and provision of wheelchairs; to increase capacity for qualified technicians to fit and service wheelchairs; to encourage participation in adaptive sports to engage people with disabilities in their communities; and to advocate on behalf of the disabled community and raise visibility of disability issues in society at large.

Wheelchairs are not one size fits all – in fact, the size of the wheelchair and components for postural support are integral to the safety and health of the user. With no resources for repair or trained service technicians to ensure appropriate fitting, many of the countries we work in do not have the capacity to meet the needs of their disabled populations — neither in terms of equipment nor in terms of trained therapists.

We subscribe to the World Health Organization’s Guidelines on Wheelchair Provision and have developed an internationally recognized training program for wheelchair service that is now being implemented in Indonesia, Ethiopia and Philippines.