Want to see Guatemalan sports champions in action?
Just pass by the public basketball court in Colonia Candelaria in La Antigua on any Friday afternoon. The team tearing up the court is part of Asociación Transiciones, a disabled people’s organisation based in this colonial city. The reigning national wheelchair basketball champions have their sights set on the upcoming Central American play-offs.
Athlete and workers:
During the working week, the players swap their jerseys for printers’ aprons, welders’ helmets and gloves. Asociación Transiciones operates two social enterprises – a print shop and a wheelchair factory – staffed by people with mobility impairments resulting from gun violence, polio, motor vehicle crashes or other accidents, or birth defects such as spina bifida. Other activities include a prosthetics clinic and a special education classroom for children with disabilities who would otherwise be unable to attend school. The organisation is also active in advocacy for disability rights and violence prevention.
About Asociación Transiciones:
Transiciones was founded nearly 20 years ago by a group of young people with disabilities, all inpatients at the Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro hospital in La Antigua https://quepasa.gt/obras-sociales-santo-hermano-pedro/. Alex Galvez, paralysed by gunshot at age 14, is now the organisation’s executive director and Hugo Andrino, affected by polio, now manages the wheelchair factory.
The factory produces robust wheelchairs for local conditions, made for each user according to their age, size, living situation, activities and ability. This personalisation enables the user to make the most productive and efficient use of their chair, while minimising common health problems such as pressure sores and urinary tract infections. The wheelchairs are provided at little or no cost to people in need.
Each client receives training in wheelchair skills, advice on how to prevent health problems, as well as on how to care for and maintain their wheelchair. 100% of the production team are people with disabilities.
Most Guatemalans with mobility impairments do not have access to appropriate assistive devices. The health system does not provide wheelchairs, and those available on the open market are unaffordable, often of poor quality, and difficult or impossible to repair when they break. This leaves many thousands of Guatemalans unable to leave their homes to work, study, socialize or participate in society. Isolation and dependency damages their health, exacerbates poverty in their households and imposes a burden on their families.
After 16 years of operating in a cramped converted auto workshop, Asociación Transiciones has just moved to a new wheelchair factory at San Felipe de Jesus, on the outskirts of La Antigua. The factory is beautiful as well as functional, deliberately rejecting the dreary institutional designs so often considered “good enough” for buildings occupied by people with disabilities.
Like most of Transiciones’ activities, the new building was made possible by contributions from donors who support the vision of people with disabilities living independently, productively and with dignity. With continued support, the organisation can have an even greater impact in terms of inclusion and empowerment of people with disabilities.
To donate + information
Asociación Transiciones
Colonia Candelaria #80, La Antigua
7832- 4261
https://transitionsfoundation.org/
Fb: /TransitionsFoundationofGuatemala
