hand for a child or an adult, and, although I am
only a junior in high school, being able to change
someone’s life.”
McCleery initially worked with Brown to design a
single hand for her son, an experience that allowed
him to assess the logistics involved in finding
sponsorship, volunteers, and hosting a massive
hand-building workshop for his Eagle Scout
project.
one from McCleery, said the device is a lifechanger, especially for children.
“My son loves the hand,” said Brown. “He was
being teased at school, and so for him the hand has
become an equalizer. When a child walks through
the door with this brightly colored superherolooking hand, the other children wish they had one
too, and it levels the playing field a little bit. It’s
just enough to take a child who was feeling a little
upset about what they are stuck with, something
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Journey/Spring 2016
that they couldn’t change, and it it increases their
self esteem. Suddenly they are getting attention and
it’s not negative attention. So that negative becomes
a positive through a $40 piece of plastic. It changes
everything. My son has gone from hiding his hand
to speaking in front of groups of people about his
experiences and how it has changed his life.”
At $40 per hand, the devices are so inexpensive,
the Enable Community Foundation volunteers are
able to find ways to provide their services at no cost
to recipients. They have supplied more than 1,500
hands to recipients all over the world, and their
design is open source, meaning anyone can use
their template to create their own hand.
“My aunt knew how interested I am in prosthetic
hands and engineering things that can grab, and
she is actually the one who told me about Enable,”
said McCleery. “I saw the prosthetic hand and
thought it was the coolest thing. I fell in love
with the idea of being able to create a prosthetic
The prosthetic hands provided by the Enable
Community Foundation are relatively easy to
assemble, so much so that K-12 STEM education
teachers around the country are incorporating
hand-building projects into their classrooms as a
lesson in both engineering and solving real-world
problems.
McCleery was able to raise enough funds to
purchase the parts to create 28 hands. He then
hosted an all-day event in his school library,
where approximately 100 volunteers assisted in
assembling all of the hands.
“Zach is a wonderful young man, very intelligent,
very organized, and he ran his event as well as any
adult could,” said Brown. “We were very impressed
with what he was able to accomplish at such a
young age.”
The hands were presented to Brown and the Enable
Community Foundation during the South’s BEST
Robotics championship at Auburn University. The
foundation then identified children in Vietnam in
need of affordable prostheses and had McCleery’s
prosthetic hands shipped to them, thus providing
life-changing and kid-friendly devices at no cost to
the children’s families.
“To be able to change someone’s life, like, a kid
who didn’t have a hand, to be able to give them a
hand so they can ride a bike, or climb a tree, or ride
a scooter, or whatever, to be able to truly change
someone’s life, especially as a junior in high school,
is incredible,” said McCleery. “This isn’t about my
Eagle Scout project; it’s about the kids I have been
fortunate enough to help – those kids are the true
heroes. And Jubilee BEST has introduced me to
something new I would never have experienced
otherwise, and also the Enable Community
Foundation – they are the true heroes.”
College of Sciences and Mathematics
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