Making a GL BALDifference

Gulfport Students Travel to Peru to Fit Prosthetic Legs for People in Need

Kelly Watson

When Don Keyser, the Engineering and Robotics instructor at Gulfport High School, heard about the incredible opportunity to partner with Life Changer Prosthetics, he recognized a chance to make a global difference- and that’s exactly what his team of students and teachers did on their trip to Peru.

Skilled Knowledgeable Youth is a company working diligently to expose young people to projects in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). This company has an on-going project, Life Changing Prosthetics, that focuses on manufacturing prosthetic legs with the intention of fitting those prosthetics to people in need.

Life Changing Prosthetics has brought on 12 high schools around the United States, including Gulfport High School, to collaborate on this project. The students at Gulfport High School’s role in the process is to work intently throughout the school year to manufacture the 3D printed parts used to assemble the prosthetic legs. They use three Markforged 3D printers to create those parts. As part of classroom instruction, Keyser teaches the students how to use and maintain these 3D printers. They then ship the parts to Chickasaw High School in Mobile, Alabama, where the legs are assembled and prepared for their journey to Central America.

Earlier this year, Keyser led a team of 4 students and 3 teachers, alongside two other partnering high schools to Peru. On this trip, the team was able to fit 37 people with prosthetic legs. This experience was life changing for everyone involved.

When asked about the impact this program has on the prosthetic leg recipients,

Keyser said, “They have felt like a burden to their families, like they can’t contribute to the household. But with the help of the prosthetics, they can be more independent and helpful to their families.”

The program is not only changing the lives of the recipients. Involvement in this project is equally as transformative for the high schoolers building the prosthetic legs. Especially for the students who were able to see the fruit of their labor by traveling to Peru and helping to fit the prosthetics. As Grayson Huffman, an engineering student who went to Peru, told WLOX news, “One part of it that was really great, was that we got to actively interview the amputees before we fit the legs, […] that allowed us to get more of a personal connection with them.” The students were able to do so because Jamir Ramirez Ro- jas, a bilingual Gulfport High student, accompanied the group to help as a translator. Being able to interact with the people they are helping, influenced one of the students, Reagan Muller, to alter her career aspirations. As Muller told WLOX news, “I learned that this is something I want to do for the rest of my life, so I’m going to try and switch my major to biomedical engineering, so I can work on prosthetics.”

Although the trip has come and gone, the future of this project is very bright with plans to make a similar trip to Columbia by the end of the year. On the upcoming trip, Keyser is hoping to add another element of support to the program. The Engineering and Robotics program has been collaborating with the construction classes to repurpose a shipping container into a functional lab-based classroom. The construction classes remodeled the container, while the engineering classes wired it to have electricity. In this way, Gulfport High School is actively seeking out new ways to benefit people in need.

Furthermore, the program is continuing to promote innovation, as Keyser is encouraging his students to work towards manufacturing an even more advanced prosthetic leg. His classes have recognized the issue of how many prosthetics a child will go through due to their growth over the course of their lifetime; and they are working towards finding a solution for this problem. Their hope is to manufacture a leg that can be altered to accommodate growth over a period of time. In this way, Keyser is fostering an environment of creative problem-solving and innovation.

“As an educator,” Keyser says “it’s rewarding to see my students tackling real-world problems by using what they are learning in class. I get to see them enact significant change in the world.”

His students share a similar sentiment, as Cedric Walker told WLOX news, “We’re getting it done for somebody rather than just a grade. It was the first time I used something I learned in here, to really make a difference.” It’s inspiring for educators everywhere to see the ways they can use their instruction to promote global change within the classroom walls.