The Dreamfit Founder

Darren is a 22 year old born and raised in Perth, Western Australia.

Darren's passion about helping people with disabilties can be traced back to six words said during an inspiring conversation with a paraplegic in a car park:

"I wish I could ride again".

After this conversation, Darren chose to specialise his engineering degree and research around the design and manufacture of recreational and leisure equipment for people with disabilties.

For his honours project, Darren designed and built a modified motorcycle that could be ridden by a paraplegic.

He single handily raised funding and organised sponsorship deals from local and international companies to cover the costs of the prototype.

During the project, Darren received numerous world wide requests from people with disabilities that wanted a motorcycle for themselves.

Darren had found his calling and his dream job - helping people with disabilities do things they never dreamt possible.

To enable this dream job to become a reality, he started his Dreamfit.

Some of the major milestones include:

2003
Darren's paraplegic modified motorcycle design was awarded with Atlas Copco's national design prize for having the "Most Ingenious Design"

2004
Darren commenced employment in a machine shop to gain valuable manufacturing and engineering experience.

2005
Darren's business plan for Dreamfit came 3rd in UWA's state wide business planning competition. Not bad considering he had very little business training or experience at the time and was up against people who had completed their masters in business.

Dreamfit was selected as a semi-finalist in the Nescafe Big Break, from almost 5000 entries. Darren will find out later in the year if he has won $50,000 to help cover the cost of starting Dreamfit and buying new equipment.

Darren also studied a certificate IV in small business management to help with the running of Dreamfit.