The wheelchair pioneer who has transformed half a million lives
DAVID CONSTANTINE says that he knew exactly what he had done the moment he heard the loud crack. “For some reason I knew I had broken my neck and that I would be paralysed for life,” he says, recalling the moment 36 years ago when as a hugely fit 21-year-old surfer he took the fateful decision to cool off in a waterhole on Fraser Island, Queensland, while doing work experience in Australia for his British agricultural degree.
“I was showing off and not thinking. While I was in the air I realised I had made a mistake. The loud crack as I hit the bottom pulled my head right round. I lay for a minute or so, face down in the water, before gathering my thoughts. I couldn’t lift my head or my arms out of the water. There was also no feeling in my legs.”
After shaking his head to try to draw the attention of his friends he realised he was running out of air. “It was then that I heard footsteps racing through the water. As my friends picked me up my head fell forward. I said, ‘I’ve broken my neck, I’m paralysed’. They thought I was in shock but I knew what had happened and it wasn’t reversible.”
As he lay waiting for an air ambulance thoughts rushed through his head – the only part of him capable of independent movement at that time (he has subsequently developed movement in his shoulders and biceps but not his hands).
“Will I ever get married? Will I ever play sport? I had no idea what the consequences would be, even though I was as fit as I had ever been.”
It was then that David’s life was replaced by an alternative reality. His dream of working as a farmer might have ended but he discovered new abilities which have ended up changing the lives of many thousands of people in the developing world.
FOR in that life-changing instant David was set on a new course that would ultimately see him retrain as a product designer at the Royal College of Art and co-found a charity called Motivation devoted to designing and providing wheelchairs and training for people in need in developing countries.
Over the past 27 years Motivation has transformed more than 500,000 lives from Malawi to Afghanistan to Cambodia. But not just in any wheelchair. “It’s the right wheelchair, in the right way that can truly transform a life,” he says. “Our unique wheelchairs are designed for the challenging environments found in developing countries and, because one size doesn’t fit all, each wheelchair is individually fitted by a trained professional.”
Last autumn Motivation’s iconic three-wheel design went on permanent display at London’s new Design Museum. And later this month the organisation’s expertise and learning will help inform the first global summit on disability and inclusion which the UK Government is co-hosting.
But during the five months after his accident David’s “whole selfimage radically changed”.
With the support of his mother, who flew out to Australia, he learned how to eat with a splint attached to his wrist and how to type – albeit just half a line in an afternoon.
“I had been strong, fit and healthy and suddenly I looked like