Demotte and Indianapolis, Indiana … Recently while traveling to Indiana for a Malawi Project (MP) board meeting Ron Pottberg took time to tour the mobility production facility in Demotte, Indiana. Ron is a member of the Malawi Project’s Board of Directors and a resident of western Colorado. He holds a special interest in the way Robert Gabrielse, president of Mobility Ministries, handles their program. Gabrielse took Pottberg and Richard Stephens, another member of the MP board, on a tour of the facility, explaining each process in the production of the hand-peddled units his team manufactures for Malawi. At the conclusion of the tour, Ron expressed his deep appreciation for the care given in the creation of each unit and the attention to detail and construction that is apparent at each stage of the process.
Since 2016 Mobility has manufactured and shipped over 1,800 mobility units to Malawi.
During the same trip, Pottberg and Stephens spent time with Will Austin, the founder and president of the Institute of Affordable Transportation in Indianapolis. Austin is the inventor of the basic utility vehicle, and more recently the new electric trike. Over several years, the MP has distributed basic utility vehicles to needed areas in Malawi, and earlier this year sent the first electric trike to Malawi for field tests. Pottberg and Austin discussed some of the other sites in Africa where the BUV’s are in operation. Pottberg works with a number of them.
