For 72 hours, a group of students, engineers and professionals gathered their knowledge to help Juan Felipe Gonzalez a high performance athlete, with his disability.

Held at The Columbus School, TOM is a worldwide program aims to find solutions for people with disabilities. In this case, a specific group helped a disabled athlete pursue his dreams when playing ping-pong.

“For me, TOM is an opportunity for a lot of people who aren’t as fortunate as we are, but still bring out the best in life and it is also an opportunity to better these people’s daily life,” said Maria Londoño an 11th grade student.

During these three days, a group gave put their hearts and souls into improving Gonzales’ life. Due to his disability of playing the game he loves in a wheelchair, the performance can’t be his best. Keeping his condition in mind, the group created a brand new innovative wheelchair.

“We saw what the problem was that Felipe’s feet weren’t very stable in the chair and affected his general stability. We decided to create a new foot holder so that he could have more stability and be more comfortable while playing ping-pong,” said Agustin Jaramillo, an 11th grade student.

With this, the group ensured that Gonzales’ life would change forever; but as they started completing their project they noticed that more improvements could be made.

“We decided also to create another solution to one of his problems that was the instability,” said Jaramillo. “We changed the wheel axles to create a 13 degree camber on the wheels creating a wider wheel base.”

Once the final wheelchair was created, Juan Felipe’s and the entire group’s life changed.

“This project is going to improve my performance 100%,” said Juan Felipe Gonzales, the athlete. “Thank you to all these engineers and these people… I am sure it was a very good job because I have been very present, I have gone with them to the EIA and I have seen an excellent job.”

Allowing Gonzales to reach his full potential in ping-pong, TOM also helped students at TCS see their lives differently.

“TOM has changed my life because it opened my eyes and showed me that not everything is the color of roses,” said Jaramillo. “It has showed me how fortunate we really all are here in school.”

TOM changed people’s way of thinking and especially the concept and definition of disability changed for everyone who was a part of this program.

“[I got to see] how really there is no type of disability. The disability is really in the mind,” said Gonzales.