Best friends Yariselle Andujar (17) and Daniela Moreno (15) decided to sign up for the school’s robotics team in their freshman year and unknowingly began their journey towards changing their lives for the better.
The current students at Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School in Cleveland, Ohio, started working with 3D printers to make parts for their robots, but knew they wanted their impact to be bigger.
“It started with a team idea,” Andujar tells PEOPLE for this week’s Girls Changing the World package. “We were trying to figure out how we could impact our community as a first year robotics team. What can we provide to our community? Later we came up with the idea of using 3D printers to make prosthetic parts, like hands. We realized that it is light but very strong, so we used 3D printers to make the prosthetics.”
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The team worked with IMAHelps, a humanitarian non-profit organization, and received a grant from The Great Lakes Science Robotics Initiative, and shortly after, began working with their first youth in need of prosthetics.
“We started making a prototype for Samantha, a 12-year-old girl from Ecuador who lost her arm in a bus accident,” explains Andujar. “We took her measurements and made prototypes, then the originals. IMAHelps brought the prosthesis back to Ecuador and it fit her perfectly and worked well.”
“Samantha had a dream to write, and we wanted to help her do it,” adds Moreno.
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The team exhibited the prototype at a high school fair, and a young amputee named Ernest Priester, 13, asked to try it out. Later, the team offered to make him a prosthesis for free. “He started crying, it brought so much joy to his eyes. And his mom was crying,” says Andujar.
It didn’t take long for other Ecuadorian children with missing limbs to see Samantha’s prosthesis and want one of their own. This July, the team traveled to Ecuador to deliver four more prostheses to those in need. “We were happy to be able to help,” Andujar says.
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With little time left, both Andujar and Moreno are looking toward their futures. “We hope to be roommates at Kent State,” Andujar says, “and become pilots,” Moreno adds.
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The duo also plans to continue distributing their 3D creations. “You can do whatever you want when it comes to helping people and changing the world,” Andujar says. “There are no restrictions or age restrictions.”
“By offering a little,” adds Moreno, “we can change a lot.”
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Source: HIS Education