It is an honor for us to make a grand return to Helping Hands Foundation’s Winter Outing again this year. We had so much fun meeting old and new families of limb different young people (and adults). In past years, we’ve spoken and run an information table about our organization. One year, we held a session on brainstorming solutions for a limb different puppy.

This year, we took the workshop first launched at Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and brought it to the young people at Helping Hands. We had a whole night to give the youth a chance to brainstorm on fun ideas and then prototype the concepts. Limb different youth and their siblings had a chance to join in on the fun.

The Mini-Workshop Experience

In the first step, everyone was given a pile of post-it notes to write down ideas from prompts we left at an “Inspiration Station” table. Our volunteers encouraged our youngest participants based on a set of questions to get their creativity flowing.

Next, each participant was challenged to pick one idea and create a prototype. We had a fantastic group of volunteers pitch in to help our young designers put their ideas into action. Some of our participants attended our Cambridge, MA workshop in 2019, so it was fun to see them advance new ideas!

In the final step, the young designers took photos of their ideas and did short presentations on their prototypes. There was a lot of creativity and support.

We hope the opportunity sparked interest in design and hope to invite our new inventors to one of our future workshops soon!