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Why We Do What We Do – Our BUV Philosophy

Everything we do here at the Institute for Affordable Transportation (IAT) in creating the Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) we do for one reason: to provide hope.
We do is about providing hope; so the poor and isolated in Africa and beyond can live better lives. By providing for people, we help those in need but also ourselves and our faith in God. By providing hope for the poor and isolated, we can help them rise out of poverty, educate their children, and live comfortably and without danger.
We do this by creating rural transportation that’s durable, simple and pays for itself. A lack of usable roads is often a major cause of this poverty. People can’t get to medical care, deliver their food to the markets, or have aid delivered to them.
So we design and help others manufacture Basic Utility Vehicles (BUVs). This lets our partners and local entrepreneurs create their own way of life and provide for themselves and their community.
That is why we do what we do, and it’s how we do it.

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“Just Far” Becomes “Just Near” with a BUV

Here in North America, it is not hard for us to find wheeled transportation to go about our regular days, whether it be a bike, public transportation, or our own vehicles to get to where we need to go. We think of distances in terms of minutes and hours, not hours and days.
 
But in the rural areas of Africa, distances are measured in miles and many hours. Better yet, just think of it as “far.” If you can’t walk to it in less than an hour, it’s “far.”
 
We received a letter from a missionary partner in Malawi and there was a quote that struck us:
 
In our country our people have to walk everywhere they go. Hence, every place is ‘just far.’ But, when Americans come here they travel around the country in cars. That is very easy so we say the distance is now ‘just near.’ Therefore no matter how far you must go in Malawi, if you have a motorized vehicle ‘just far’ turns into ‘just near.’
 
This is our goal for our BUVs. We want to turn far into near. We want to make it easier for people to more easily travel to different parts of their country, to get the necessary items they need, and helping people get from ‘far’ to ‘near’ faster.

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