Tag Archives: University Consortium

Your Help is Hurting

  By AT | August 27, 2013 - 3:18 pm |
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Alice is listening to this honest and truth telling podcast on Forbes.com. In this podcast, Your Help is Hurting, Jerry Bowyer interviews Peter Greer, the President and CEO of Hope International, which is a microfinance organization, about how are giving hurts others and ourselves. HWI has grappled with working to implement this type of model with our trikes. There is always the question of how can the disabled give back. We have some business students in our University Consortium students who are grappling with this issue on HWI’s behalf in a program in India. Unfortunately it is much easier to be Santa Claus instead of a responsible steward.

God’s Ultimate Orchestration

  By AT | August 15, 2013 - 10:43 pm |
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For years we at HWI have been praying, planning, and plodding about how to get our trike seen by someone at Willow Creek. We’ve known that Willow Creek has directors in different parts of the world but even though some of our board goes there, we’ve never found our way to the right people.

 

Today Alice received an email. In it Alice learned that some people from the Dominican Republic were at the Willow Creek Leadership conference last week. (more…)

Refining Our Focus

  By AT | July 16, 2013 - 7:12 pm |
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After 8 years of distributing over 1,700 two-wheeled bicycles we are ending that aspect of our ministry so we can focus our undivided attention on our hand-pedaled trikes. The initial bicycle goal Alice set was 100 in her lifetime. We have finished that aspect of the ministry well.

 

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Spring Arbor University & HWI Brainstorm Session

  By AT | June 28, 2013 - 11:22 pm | , ,
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On Monday June 24th Kevin and Alice left home at 5AM and drove 4 hours to Spring Arbor University (SAU). There we met with old and new friends. One of the old friends was Carla, Alice coast-to-coast cycling leader from 1977. It only took us 2 hours for 5 of us to travel the world through our brainstorming efforts. Pray with us as we watch our university trike consortium grow. (more…)

Trike Stress Testing

  By AT | June 28, 2013 - 10:06 pm | ,
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Today we did some potentially destructive testing on a DOTT trike frame. (Note that all of these tests were performed without the additional strength of a “Haiti Brace” installed. The Haiti brace is an extra support welded into the frame below the seat that helps to strengthen the trike frame. All current HWI trikes use this brace.)

These tests at HWI were done in parallel with the Solidworks computer stress analysis reports compiled by the students at Messiah College.

The intention was to provide us with a feel, both practically and theoretically for how strong the design was, and to help identify any weaknesses in the design. Unfortunately, we ran out of weight for the test as we approached 900 pounds. We really did not expect to get that far.

Our future tests will involve actually overloading the trike to see what parts do fail first.

As well as providing valuable theoretical analysis of the trike design, the students at Messiah College were able to identify the likelihood that most of our trike frame would still be strong enough even if we used a slightly smaller diameter of tubing. Thanks again to the students and staff at Messiah College for their work and suggestions.

 

The End of our Bicycle Division

  By AT | June 12, 2013 - 7:15 pm |
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     As of June 1, 2013, His Wheels International (HWI) will no longer be accepting bicycle donations. We
are winding down the two-wheeled bicycle aspect of our ministry and plan to end the bicycle division by September 14, 2013.
      I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have had a part in our bicycle division. Thanks
for directing people towards HWI who have had bicycles to donate, time to volunteer, and for a variety of
other reasons. Thanks also to those of you who have donated bicycles, surplus stock, tools, and accessories.
I also want to thank you for lending us your professional expertise and also for helping us get the word
out about our ministry. Without your assistance, we never would have been able to touch so many lives in our community, throughout the United States, and internationally with our bicycle ministry. As a team,
we have distributed almost 1,700 bicycles that we have collected and our mechanics have rehabbed so we could recycle them to those in need of basic transportation and for many their first set of wheels in the United States.