PROJIMO is changing! (status Jan. 2007)

The project in Ajoya that David Werner wrote about no longer exists.

PROJIMO has changed since the Ajoya, and in many aspects has changed profoundly.

Some think these changes are all for the better.
Some would disagree with that viewpoint and might experience disappointment upon visiting PROJIMO.

The world around PROJIMO is changing, and PROJIMO has changed in response to that.

These changes are most visible in the more widespread use of donated mass-produced equipment. 

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PROJIMO does receive its share of Inappropriate Technology also.
(already broken or unsuitable for the rough environment = broken soon.)

Parts are recycled where possible. The rest goes the way of all the other  garbage...

Is PROJIMO losing contact with its roots?

All organizations are influenced by their environment.  Change in the environment causes change in the organization.
There seems little sense in attaching a moral judgment to these changes, claiming that they are either good or bad. 

Todd Lefkowicz  has told me about a wheelchair shop in Peru. They used to make up to 300 wheelchairs per month only a few years ago. Since then, their market has been flooded with so many donated wheelchairs that the wheelchair shop had to let go all  five of its (disabled) workers. People who have to live on less than US$2/ per day will not pay US$200 to have a chair custom made, if they can get one for free in the mission post.  Whether these donated mass-production chairs are suitable for the intended users is of course an entirely different issue...

The motivation for PROJIMO to build the wooden walker was that the aluminum ones were either too expensive, not readily available, or could not be repaired or replaced if something broke.  That has changed. Nowadays, donated aluminum walkers are readily available at little or no cost. All the project needs to do is to pull another one from the storage rack.  
It is so much easier...

However, easier is not necessarily better. One of the motivations behind "Appropriate Technology" is that these mass-produced generic devices often aren't, at least not for the environment or the person that they  are being donated to. Another very important part of PROJIMO's mission used to be to teach people how  to make simple, low-cost rehab equipment, that parents with limited income could reproduce more easily at home and adapt better to their children's changing needs. The process is demystified and the family empowered. (quote D. Werner) 
That of course gets lost entirely, if you just pull new equipment off the shelf...

Questioning the solution?

or "David Werner's regrets."

The people of Ayoya did not start Proyecto Piaxtla or PROJIMO with the intention that they would stand model for the rest of the world. That happened as the result of  David Werner's books about these projects. The goal for the people of Ajoya  was at first to help themselves and their community, and later to help other disabled people.   
Despite all the changes, today's PROJIMO is still doing that.

Ironically enough, PROJIMO's rising fame was also the factor that changed the essential nature of PROJIMO which had enabled it to become that model in the first place. Poverty challenges people to do more with less. As PROJIMO became better known, more people and more resources started coming in. The change away from the "primitive model" of a remote and resource-poor community started well before the project moved away from Ajoya. The poverty-related challenges that created the primitive model were literally left behind when PROJIMO moved to Coyotitan in 1999. Compared to Ajoya, Coyotitan is very accessible, and nowadays donations and resources keep pouring in, at times by the truckload. 

To the people of PROJIMO, the wooden walker was never a goal by itself, but only a means. 
Ajoya was a remote and resource-poor location. Wood was the one resource that was locally available in large quantities and at low cost.  Therefore, a wooden walker was the best way they had  to help a child walk better. 

For many remote and resource-poor communities all over the world, the wooden (or APT) walker remains the appropriate solution.  Because of that, David Werner's regrets that he no longer sees the wooden walker In PROJIMO. 
He is however realist enough,  most of the time anyway,   :-)   to acknowledge that there is no returning to the old model in the PROJIMO of today. The people of PROJIMO could make a conscious decision to restore the "primitive" image of the organization, but it would be a fake, a museum-like reproduction for old-time sake rather than reality. 

What David Werner regrets more is that PROJIMO has become conventional. The spark of creativity that he captured so well in his books is gone, and PROJIMO has become just one program between the many, nothing much more than a 9 to 5 job to bring bread to the table of its management. It is the regret that a father might feel who sees that his child - who showed so much promise - has now become more of a Homer Simpson than the astronaut the child always wanted to be... 

But that should not be a reason for despair. Just as the spirit of chivalry survived King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, so does the legacy of PROJIMO survive in a new generation.  The spirit of helping self by helping others and of creativity in the face of challenge, lives on in the children of PROJIMO. 

PROJIMO has been a great model to a multitude of spin-off organizations throughout Mexico and thanks to David Werner's books, throughout the entire world.  These communities are very much alive and vibrant, and stand independently from PROJIMO on their own feet. PROJIMO served (and survived) it's purpose. Whatever may happen to the PROJIMO of today, THE SPIRIT OF PROJIMO LIVES, in its children! That is something any parent could be rightfully proud of. 

In the name of all the children of your very precious child, and of all the people who have benefited, THANK YOU, David Werner !

Page last modified: October 27, 2011

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