Engineering bright futures in T.O.M

T.O.M recently shook the entire city of Medellin making an appearance at The Columbus School as a program that connects students and people with disabilities.

Tikkun Olam Makers is a start up from israel non-profit Reut Group. It came to Medellin and to the Columbus School in order to help students develop their engineering, teamwork and problem solving skills while helping people from their community who have disabilities.

“It’s very exciting to be able to take part in a project like this. I’ve always been into engineering and being able to apply my knowledge by helping people from my community is really humbling”, said T.O.M Maker and Senior student Camilo Diez. “We were able to restore this man’s ability to sew, even after he lost his hand more than two years ago.”

T.O.M was launched in 2014 by Arnon Zamir and Josh Gottesman as part of an ROI Schusterman Connection points program, giving birth to a “global movement of Makers using their talents and creativity to design ‘public domain’ assistive technology with people with disabilities.”

“We were not makers; instead we were volunteers and in charge of all the logistics of the event. We were able to connect with the people that we were helping and we could really get to see the impact that we were making in the lives of these people, even those of us that were not Makers,” Said Junior student Simon Lopera.

This organization will continue to work around the world and will make many more events like the one we had in our school. The plan on going to Uruguay in the second week of November, then Mexico, and then Melbourne, Australia.

“Being able to give as much help as possible is great,” said Junior student Lucas Santiago Hall. “I took a class on engineering last year and this isn’t an experience just to improve on those skills, but also to be a part of my community, which isn’t as easy since we are students at this school.”