MILWAUKEE — Marquette University’s Opus College of Engineering and Penfield Children’s Center partnered up with more than 50 student volunteers from Marquette, and high schools across Milwaukee on Saturday, November 9 for their third annual adaptive toy build days.
Vladimir Bjelic, a Speech Language Pathologist at Penfield Children’s Center says for children with disabilities, access to specialty toys can make a huge difference in their development, saying, “With having a button now they’re able to activate the toy so they’re the ones that are actually engaging with the toy instead of the parent doing it for them.”
Bjelic added buying specially modified toys outright can cost between 200 to 600 percent more than their unmodified counterparts, and hosting these build days, allows him to provide modified toys to clinics and families free of charge.
Molly Erickson, Research Engineer for Marquette’s Opus College of Engineering, says the modified toys can help a variety of kids. Erickson said, “Any child that potentially has limited vision, limited dexterity — anything like that — these can be a better option for them than regular toys.”
Marquette University’s third annual toy build day brought more than 50 volunteers from the university and high schools around the Milwaukee area to specially adapt toys for children with disabilities.
The high school volunteers also compete with different First Robotics teams. Rufus King High School Junior, Declan Combs competes with 1675 Ultimate Protection Squad. He says these build days are a great opportunity, “It’s good practice for us, but then it’s also like, helping people out outside of it.”
For Marquette Mechanical Engineering Sophomore Diana Moses, volunteering for the build day is personal.
“My little sister goes to occupational therapy and she’s been through a lot of this — So I see her in the little kids that we’re helping and it’s really special to me.”
Marquette’s build days are donor-funded and this year’s event hopes to adapt six different types of toys to provide more than 200 toys for clinics and families.
