Senior Engineering Students Launch Club to Adapt Toys for Disabled Children
Michael Gibbons and Aaron Clarion leave behind a thriving student organization at Rutgers-New Brunswick
When Michael Gibbons transferred to Rutgers in January of 2023, he was in search of a club where he could connect with other engineering students while modifying toys for disabled children in the community.
But such a student club didn’t exist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, so Gibbons started his own with the help of fellow engineering student and friend Aaron Clarion.
Now, only a year after its official start, the A4A club – which stands for “accessible, adaptive, accommodating and adventurous for all” – has about 50 active members who have already redesigned adaptable ride-on cars for five families in just one semester with plans to give four more families their vehicles later this month.
The students in A4A don’t receive class credit and are volunteering their time while attending classes and managing their course load.
“The one thing I love seeing is that everyone there, they don’t do it for their resume,” said Gibbons, of Oradell, N.J., who serves as the club’s president. “They’re doing it because they love to do it and because they want to help the kids out.”
Gibbons’ idea for the club came from his previous school, Assistive Medical Technologies at University of Delaware. He said it was the first organization where he felt he belonged and where he made his first friends. He wanted to replicate that sense of community when he came to Rutgers.
That club and the one he created at Rutgers inspired him to reconsider his career path. An electrical engineering major, Gibbons had expected he’d have a transportation job, but now he wants to work with prosthetics.
After the A4A got off the ground, Gibbons found the families by cold-calling area pediatric physical therapists to inform them about the club and asking them to let their clients know. A4A used the funding it received from Rutgers University Student Assembly to purchase the riding toys and other tools, equipment and materials to modify the vehicles. The families pay nothing.
“We had a showcase last December when all the families came in, and it was like the best day of my life seeing everyone so happy, to actually receive the cars and see everything we’ve done with them,” said Gibbons, 21, who along with Clarion are graduating in May. “It’s one of the coolest things.”
One of those families includes Omar Khalid, whose 20-month-old son Elyas suffered a brain injury during birth and has cerebral palsy and epilepsy as a result.
“Kids like him just want to be able to live as normal as possible and this car gives him that opportunity,” said Khalid, of Montgomery Township, N.J. “It allows him to be more mobile.”
Clarion, who served as the club’s vice president, was the lead project manager for Elyas’s ride-on car, affectionately named “Bobo’s Benz” after the toddler’s nickname. Clarion and his crew added red carpet and felt to the interior of the ride-on car, along with silver wrapping to the seat cushion to increase the texture for Elyas because he enjoys touching different textures. They also added cushions and a harness to ensure he remained steady during his rides and installed LED lights underneath and inside the car as an extra safety feature.
Khalid said it’s nearly impossible to find safe and appropriate toys for Elyas. He and his wife have had to make their own adjustments or find a vendor, usually online, to make small changes to his toys, such as enlarging the buttons. But nothing to the extent and detail that the Rutgers students were able to provide.
He found out about the group through Elyas’s physical therapist, and he admits he didn’t realize the program was run by a group of undergrads. He said he was impressed with their knowledge, enthusiasm and willingness to understand Elyas’s needs, providing continued updates to ensure the project was on track.
Clarion said it was easy to keep his team of peers motivated during the project.
“Initially it was an interesting opportunity for these students to be able to do something they hadn’t done before – do engineering work for something good,” said Clarion, of Verona, N.J. “The moment they had started building the car, that’s when it clicked for a lot of them, that they really wanted to keep it going.”
The payoff came during the showcase when they gave the toys to the families.
“We finally get to see why we’re doing this in the first place, and it’s for these kids. And it’s great to see them have fun in these cars.”
Even as he and Clarion are leaving, Gibbons is not concerned about the club’s future.
“The people who we have right now who will step in, they’re even better than us. I’m not worried at all.”
Gibbons has even bigger plans for A4A. He has reached out to an attorney to create a non-profit so he can raise funds and help create chapters of the club at other higher education institutions.
Khalid hopes Gibbons can pull it off and widen the group’s reach.
“We live close to Rutgers, so it was easy for us to connect to them, but it would be wonderful for other families to have access to something like this,” he said.
