March 2, 2010 at 16:36Where they try to change this world for the better
Look at this photo.
It seems to be a plain and not too aesthetic mechanism. But it turns out that this is an off-road wheelchair for the poor, designed by a student from MIT.
The first question that arose with me - why is a technological university doing this? It seems that there should be IT specialists, entrepreneurs. And suddenly the whole horror of this question reached me ... So after all, this is the main business of the best universities, namely, helping ordinary people.
The need for such seats is explained by Morgan Bettex from the MIT press service:
“According to the UN Development Program, in developing countries, local manufacturing satisfies the need for wheelchairs by less than 1%. Partly due to the fact that small shops cannot reach the desired economic scale and become profitable. In addition, the wheelchairs that are available are usually not designed for people who need to travel through busy roads and clogged streets, which for the most part are Third World countries. As a result, millions of people must either rely on the help of others or sit for home security. ”
And now the question is for all of us - and who in Russia is engaged in similar matters? Now little by little they started talking about social entrepreneurship, but so far no real cases have been seen or for some reason they are not being written about them.
But you really want people to smile more often with us.
upd: video
It seems to be a plain and not too aesthetic mechanism. But it turns out that this is an off-road wheelchair for the poor, designed by a student from MIT.
The first question that arose with me - why is a technological university doing this? It seems that there should be IT specialists, entrepreneurs. And suddenly the whole horror of this question reached me ... So after all, this is the main business of the best universities, namely, helping ordinary people.
The need for such seats is explained by Morgan Bettex from the MIT press service:
“According to the UN Development Program, in developing countries, local manufacturing satisfies the need for wheelchairs by less than 1%. Partly due to the fact that small shops cannot reach the desired economic scale and become profitable. In addition, the wheelchairs that are available are usually not designed for people who need to travel through busy roads and clogged streets, which for the most part are Third World countries. As a result, millions of people must either rely on the help of others or sit for home security. ”
And now the question is for all of us - and who in Russia is engaged in similar matters? Now little by little they started talking about social entrepreneurship, but so far no real cases have been seen or for some reason they are not being written about them.
But you really want people to smile more often with us.
upd: video