CLEVELAND — This week, a group of students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will embark on a volunteer trip to the Dominican Republic to deliver prosthetics to children in need.

What You Need To Know

  • A group of students from Cleveland are traveling to the Dominican Republic on a volunteer trip to deliver prosthetics to children in need
  • The students made the prosthetics using 3D printers

  • The students will be in the Dominican Republic for 10 days

Yariselle Andujar, a high school senior, and her classmates are putting the final touches on prosthetic hands they made to take to the Dominican Republic.

“We’ve created a bunch of palms, a bunch of fingers, a bunch of pins and little kits,” Andujar explained. “That way when we get over there, if we find people that do need a prosthetic, then we will fit them with it.” 

The global community service project is called Hands Across Borders. The students use 3D printers to build prosthetics for children. Last year, they traveled to Ecuador and also help children here in northeast Ohio. 

Junior, Kyle Williams, explained that for this trip to the Dominican Republic, students will be taking 20 prosthetic devices that they have already made along with two 3D printers with them, so they will be able to make up to 20 more custom prosthetics while they are there.

“We measure their other hand to get their size,” Williams explained. “If they need a custom size, then we can print it right on the spot.”

Williams said they are hoping to leave a lasting impact on the country.

“One of these (3D printers), we hope to be able to leave with a first robotics team down there,” the student explained. “We are going to give them one of our 3D printers if they don’t have any.”

JonDarr Bradshaw, the mentor for this initiative, really credits the students with all of this amazing work. 

“Our kids figured out that with a 3D printer, they could make a prosthetic hand or a prosthetic arm for less than $100. In fact, they can make a hand for about $55 and they can make a whole arm for about $65,” Bradshaw explained. “Now our kids are inner-city kids, inner-city kids from right here in Cleveland, Ohio. Our kids know what it’s like to be poor, and they felt if there was a family out there that needed something they could provide, our kids wanted to do it for free. 

The mentor said the students will be getting a lot of hands on experience while they are in the country and they expect to see up to 700 patients a day.

“For most of the people that we will be seeing, they have traveled for more than six hours to get to where we are coming. Most of them will have never seen a doctor in their lives,” Bradshaw explained. “I mean, these are some of the poorest communities in the world that we will see, and among them we see many patients who need a limb for one reason or another. It could be a birth defect or an accident.”