The Power of a Hand
How We Started
Our story started years and years ago. Eric Yao (a current junior at West Liberty High School) lost the fingers on his left hand in an accident at the age of two. As Eric grew up, he was very insecure about his hand and would wear a fake cast to hide his flaw from society. His only freedom was his curiosity of playing with LEGOS and taking apart old toys to explore the functionality of the mechanics. In seventh grade he came to our instructor, Jackie Henderson, wondering how he could change his mentality about having a physical disability. Jackie quickly helped him realize that instead of spending his time thinking about all the things he couldn't do, he should spend it learning about the things he could do. One day, Eric saw a video about a LEGO prosthetics creator David Aguilar ("Hand Solo") on The Great Big Story. His impactful and innovative creations and ambition of building LEGO prosthetics deeply inspired Eric to use his knowledge of LEGO blocks to create his very own Lego hand prosthetic for fun. As explained on the "Prototypes" page at the top of our website, he created his first hand in 2019 prior to COVID-19. He built it out of LEGO blocks, string, and scraps he found around the house. This small prosthetic claw opened his eyes to all the possibilities and all the things he was capable of. Now, here we are, 4 years later and we have been tasked, by Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, with identifying and fixing a problem within our community using STEM. We have decided to use Eric's story to inspire and help others that are either struggling with a disability or just want to help out those in their community, like we do. We hope to eventually create prosthetic starter kits for those in need or for others to build them for whomever may need it.
Our 5th-Grade Presentation
On December 11th, 2023 our team went into the West Liberty Middle School to pitch our idea and project to a class of fifth graders. This was our vert first time presenting in front of an audience and we weren't sure how it was going to go. During this presentation, many of the children were very curious about what Eric's life was like with a disability (i.e.: if he could play sports, his ideas for upcoming prototypes, what his day to day life looked like, etc.). Presenting in front of the younger generations of our community significantly opened our eyes to the differences between interests as age grows. Our younger audience, like the fifth graders, were very curious about Eric's life outside of . The secondary level students we presented to later on were in absolute awe of the technical and coding part of the prosthetics. Our more elder viewers have been more interested and touched by the story and the inspiration behind it instead of the hands themselves.
Our Future Plans
As we continue on with this project, we have many upcoming goals. Currently (December 16th), we have created our Instagram account, TikTok account, and Youtube Channel. We have scheduled our LEGO drive, been to Middle School classrooms, and have plans to present to our school administration in upcoming weeks. We also have a collaboration set up with Protostudios through the University of Iowa. They have reached out to us and offered 3-D printing help for our starter kits. We have already seen significant levels of reached audiences with over 4,000 people touched by our story. Our next part to this project is creating a short documentary about the process of this incredible story. The documentary will include touching videos about Eric's life growing up without fingers, interviews of multiple people that have been a part of Eric's journey, and explanations of all the parts of this timeline. After the second phase of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow project, we plan on creating tangible prosthetic starter kits for children to be able to build by themselves. We plan on making kits using both LEGO blocks and 3-D printed parts that are easily assembled and easy to utilize.
