High school students spend week developing unique solutions for the disabled community
What do you get when you throw about 55 high school students and 11 person with varying types of disabilities in a building for one week? Well, if it happened to be an event called Design The Future, you're likely to see many fresh, innovative and simple solutions to many obstacles individuals with disabilities have endured and may finally overcome thanks to the brilliant minds of the youth.
We wrote about this event a couple of months ago. NorCal SCI co-founder Franklin Elieh, a quadriplegic, signed up for this week-long program with a goal in mind: have his team develop a self-administered exercise contraption that would allow for resistant-based workouts while in the wheelchair (both my manual and power) and that it has to be portable, meaning I can take it to work or on vacations, too.
As a Project Partner, I was grouped with a team of five high school students and a recent engineering graduate from Stanford University who was the Coach. There were 10 other similar teams. This was no competition but a week-long, grueling program that forced the teams of students to work collaboratively, understand and develop empathy toward the challenge the disabled person was trying to resolve, learn to brainstorm, prototype, get feedback and develop a finished product. I was on-site with them for two half days and spoke by phone on two other days.
From left to right standing: Cindy, Arjun, Sanjana, Shaan, Jonathan; in the front: Franklin and Meghna
The first day together was dedicated to drilling me with tons of questions. Understandably, they were a bit apprehensive working with a disabled person, Best cure for that: humor. By the end of the session, they were far more relaxed and stopped calling me Mr. Franklin. In the ensuing days, there was more brainstorming and checking in with each other on their progress.
Finally, on Sunday, during the closing ceremonies, their finished product was presented. I was stunned by the simplicity, yet effectiveness of their final product which consisted of therabands that were assembled into these easy-to-wear wrist cuffs. I was able to easily put them on the handles of my wheelchairs or trap the therabands under my tires. They also developed a workout chart with demonstrations of positions, shot a video (with my favorite '80s tune The Final Countdown by Europe) and even developed a simple web site for me to share.
The smiles on their faces, upon confirmation by me that they had developed a great solution, will not be forgotten and I hope these five teenagers have developed a more open mind regarding the challenges persons with disabilities face and hope that they'll remember this opportunity wherever and whatever they end up doing.