Toy Adapt-a-Thon

Written by Darina Lubenov 

Siebel Center for Design hosted Innovators in Action, a club within Carle Illinois College of Medicine, in the SCD Shop for a toy “Adapt-a-Thon.” The club adapted and donated around 40 accessible children’s toys for the local community that were altered using resources within the Shop.

Innovators in Action President Oluwabusayo Oni is a second-year medical student at Carle. She founded Innovators in Action, a chapter of Makers Making Change, where professionals lead sessions that make community-created adaptations to technology and toys. 

“We made a bunch of accessibility kits that we put together,” Oni said. “The toy that we did was a bubble machine. And basically, for all of these toys, the main thing that you do is you add a switch to it, and a switch is just a button that you're more easily able to use independently.”

Innovators in Action addresses engineering-based medicine in their curriculum, and in the CU community. As a chapter of Makers Making Change, they focus on accessible devices.

Oni’s team ran their fourth consecutive “Adapt-a-Thon” on Wednesday, December 4. Alongside the adapted bubble machines, participants also made dice poppers and 3D printed accessibility kits. 

Neil Pearse, shop supervisor at SCD, helped the group find and book the shop.

“They own all the credit,” Pearse said. “This is what we want to see as shop utilization. That sort of idea where it’s powered by the individual. They put in the time ahead of time to learn how to use our equipment.” 

Pearse and Oni worked together to organize the event in the shop. 

“Let's pivot to Siebel Center, whose idea being: everybody come in, everybody can do whatever they want, and there's no tension there,” Oni said. “That transformed it because we're going from having a couple people show up to, 30 to 40. At that amount of people, you get so much more work done.” 

The team delivered all their toys to schools and groups in the C-U community in the following week. Innovators in Action were able to get in contact with groups in the community, with the help of Julie Cutright, Coordinator of Community Partnerships at Carle Illinois College of Medicine, according to Oni. 

The team has an active Linktree where anyone from the community can access to donate and to participate in events. WCIA News also covered the event in this video story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLu21P4I8co

"Seeing the amount of people that are willing to help, and people saying, 'hey, when's the next one? Let me know what's going on,' it really made me feel so much better,” Oni said. “ I can't have this just be a thing where it's just a little resume line. I want to make sure it's something that stays when I leave [Illinois]."