Organization: Whirlwind Wheelchair International (San Francisco State University Foundation)

Focus Areas:	Children, Technology, Economic Development, Human Rights
Countries Served:	Brazil Colombia India Turkey Viet Nam South Africa

Description of Services:
The services Whirlwind offers include wheelchair design and training in wheelchair production, assembly, assessment and fitting, use and maintenance, repair, business and marketing, cushion manufacture Wheelchair quality standards and testing and organizational development of our NGO partner organizations for transparency, sustainability and successful advocacy.
History:
Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI) is a program of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at San Francisco State University. Founded in 1989 as the Wheeled Mobility Center by paraplegic engineer and wheelchair designer Ralf Hotchkiss, WWI grew out of Hotchkiss's work since 1980, traveling the globe designing wheelchairs that could be built in developing countries from locally available materials. In addition to local small shop production, since 2003,Whirlwind has worked on developing regional production for higher volume production of high-quality Whirlwind-style wheelchairs in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Accomplishments & Progress:
Founder and Chief Engineer Ralf Hotchkiss is a winner of the MacArthur "Genius" Award and dozens of other honors and awards for his wheelchair design work. Marc Krizack, Director of Operations, helped establish Russia?s first independent living center, first university level disabled students program and first university level orientation and mobility (for blind people) teacher preparation program. The Vietnam regional production facility opened in 2007. It is the first of a dozen such facilities planned. It's current capacity is 5000 wheelchairs per year.