www.thepapersonline.com
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Serving Kosciusko County and parts of Elkhart, Marshall & Noble Counties unties
Know Your Neighbor. . . . . 2➤ Good Neighbors . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Vol. 53, No. 11
Milford (574) 658-4111 • Warsaw (574) 269-2932 • Syracuse (574) 457-3666
114 W. Market, Warsaw, Indiana 46580
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program to enter its SIXTH year %\ 0$5,66$ 6:($7/$1' 6WDII :ULWHU The GoBabyGo! program is about to start its sixth year at Edgewood Middle School. Abbi Richcreek heads the program, along with Sam Cook and many volunteer mentors. Richcreek originally learned about the program during an engineering conference she attended; the program was showcased at the conference. “The keynote speaker was Cole Galloway, who is a physical therapist from the University of Delaware, and he’s the one who created this idea. He gave an inspirational speech, and it just captured my attention,” Richcreek explained, “He asked, ‘Who do we help?’ with GoBabyGo! you can spend all this time on design and you get to help people, and it made me stop and think how we could do that here at Edgewood.” GoBabyGo! is an after-school
program where 12-volt vehicles are modified for toddlers who have developmental impairments. Each car is worked on and customized by a group of Edgewood students, under the guidance of community mentors and physical therapist, Dr. Aaron Turner. Students are continuously collaborating with each other, the toddler, their family, and their mentors. Besides receiving hands-on engineering experience, students also grow their communication skills. The students participating in the program apply for their spots and are picked by committee. Students are not required to have engineering backgrounds or any pre-requisite classes. This year, the program has 16 students working on five Jeeps. EMS students have reconfigured and donated 22 Jeeps to impaired toddlers. Students reconfigure each car with the toddler’s abilities in mind. If the toddler is unable to use pedals, the team will wire the car to
run off of buttons. Among the mentors are engineers from Depuy, Zimmer-Biomet, Paragon Medical, Dalton, and a couple of engineering students from Grace College. “My favorite part of being apart of the program is getting to see the kids’ happiness. Seeing them be able to do and get around like they want to. It’s so cool to see and it feels so good to be apart of that,” Bayleigh Sleeth explained. “Besides learning about the engineering side, I have grown in my communication and team work skills. We are constantly talking to each other, our mentors and our kid. We are a team.” She is a part of the Depuy team and her team is modifying a pink Jeep for their toddler, Coralynn. Sleeth is wanting to pursue engineering as a future career. “One of my favorite moments of the program is seeing the joy of the children when they receive the final car,” JoElla Hauselman, prin-
cipal of EMS, explained. “I would love to see GoBabyGo! get bigger. We would love to be able to help more kids. But with more vehicles, comes more expenses. Each Jeep costs $600 to complete,” Richcreek explained. The program has been made possible from a KEYS grant from the Kosciusko County Community Foundation; however, if community members would like to make a donation to GoBabyGo! contact Richcreek at arichcreek@warsawschools.org. The 2023 GoBabyGo! cars were presented to their drivers at the Third Friday in May. The first meeting of the 2024 GoBabyGo! is set for February, and there will be six meetings over the course of February to April. The cars will then be presented to their toddlers during the Third Friday in April. If you’re interesting in signing your student or toddler up, or interested in becoming a mentor, contact Richcreek for more information.