A Night To Lend A Hand

Through our partnership with Fab Lab Hub, a part of the MIT network, over the course of 2 nights, we watched a committed group of employees from the Council on International Education and Exchange (CIEE) give their time, commitment and positive outlook to the task of assembling 3-D printed prosthetic hands for children in India. Through our partnership with Fab Lab Hub (a part of the MIT network), On night 1 we realized that there were issues with the printed parts, all of which had been printed and generously donated by a company in Boston, MA called NV Bots. To our amazement, we had a 3-D printing expert among us, Jacob Perry from the Open Bench Project in Portland! Jacob stepped forward with an incredibly generous offer to take hundreds of hand parts back to his shop and “re-tool” them.

About 3 weeks later we reconvened at CIEE’s Café.  Using a variety of traditional and some non-traditional tools (fingernail files, putty knives, Swiss army knives), creative problem solving, and collaboration, the night came to a close with the prosthetics nearing completion. Our team at Limitless Child will be finishing up the hands in the next two weeks and reporting back on the impact our CIEE volunteers had on extremely vulnerable children.

On April 1st, we travel to India to where we will work with India’s Central Adoption Resource Agency (responsible for 1,500 orphanages) and the Lifeline Express (providing health care to underserved communities throughout India ). Together with these organizations we will identify those children who will most benefit from the prosthetic hands and our other programs at Limitless Child.

We cannot thank you enough for inspiring us to forge ahead by supporting our work, the mission of Limitless Child International and the children we serve.  And a special thanks to Sarah Boisvert, Founder of Fab Lab Hub for co-hosting the event with CIEE.

 - Jenny Mills, Executive Director