For local mom Caitlin Bledsoe, everything changed in May 2025 when her son suffered a stroke that resulted in a traumatic brain injury and left him with limited mobility.
“He struggles using his limbs and he can’t really remember how to walk, but we’re hopeful that he will relearn everything,” Bledsoe said. “It’s going to take time.”
A toddler mobility trainer tool allows a child to be pushed and gain their own mobility with time. This tool is crucial in the process of recovering mobility, but insurance only offered the Bledsoe’s one medical device for the next five years.
The family decided to wait until their toddler is a little older because he would quickly outgrow a mobility device. With their toddler turning three next month, spending that insurance money on a temporary device seemed like a waste, but any additional devices would have to be paid for out of pocket by the family.
“Medical devices are not cheap, so the thought of having to spend over $4,000 on a wheelchair every year is just insane to me,” Bledsoe said.
After dealing with her son’s condition for 10 months, Bledsoe saw the Cal Poly club Tikkun Olam Makers on Facebook in January and reached out about a project they had already been developing at the Mustang Makerspace.
Tikkun Olam Makers, which translates to repairing the world in Hebrew, is a global movement that provides people in need with affordable solutions for their disabilities, according to their website.
The student organization works to support “Need Knowers,” which is a person who knows the needs of the person with the disability, according to president of the organization Noah Alloun.
“That could be the person themselves that has a disability. It could also be a parent, a caretaker, an occupational therapist or physical therapist,” Alloun, a mechanical engineering junior, previously said to Mustang News.
READ MORE: Tikkun Olam Makers empower SLO residents
Tikkun Olam Makers gives out all devices for free and funds them through the global organization.
Building the device
Once connected, the club began customizing the free mobility trainer for the toddler. The device required a total of 285 hours of 3D printing time and was built in two separate sessions, according to project manager Eitan Ziegel.
The first building session included members taking the excess material off of the 3D parts and sanding them down to then paint them the toddler’s favorite color, blue. Made up mostly of 3D-printed parts, the mobility trainer excludes the casters on the bottom and the wheels, according to Ziegel.
“This is one of our largest projects we’ve done,” Ziegel said.
The material used is a flexible printing filament called Thermoplastic Polyurethane for the straps and Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol filament for the base of the chair, according to Ziegel.
“It’s the coolest thing the way things are 3D printed,” Bledsoe said. “There’s hard plastic for the hard parts, and then there’s the soft parts for the headrest that are nice and squishy, All the thought that went into all that is so cool.”
The device was completed in February during a build party, where students from the organization come together and build the device in real time. They also had the family there to watch the eight club members assemble the toddler mobility trainer.
“It was cool to have the parents get to observe us putting it together and really see the work, and see a group of college students kind of coming together to build that.” Alloun said. “After we did, getting to see their son use the wheelchair, getting pushed around, smiling, that part was great as well.”
While Alloun and Ziegal headed the project, there was an immense amount of collaboration involved at the build party, according to Ziegel.
“When you actually see the kid that can’t walk and just has a wheelchair, they’re [club members] all super motivated,” Ziegel said. “They all seemed really happy when we delivered [the wheelchair] and saw the kid inside and rolling around in it.”
Along with the toddler mobility trainer, Tikkun Olam Makers donated six different writing tools to the family.
“It’s much easier for him to hold something large and not have to worry about holding a little pen or a crayon,” Bledsoe said. With the new writing tools, “he just glows,” Bledsoe said. “He starts smiling and gets so excited because he can do things that other kids are doing too. It’s so cute.”
