South Middlesex Times

When Michael Gibbons transferred to Rutgers University in January 2023, he was searching for a club to engage with fellow engineering students and modify toys for disabled children. Finding no existing club of this nature, Gibbons, along with his friend Aaron Clarion, started the A4A club. The acronym stands for "accessible, adaptive, accommodating and adventurous for all." Within a year, the club boasts roughly 50 active members who have redesigned adaptable ride-on cars for several families and are preparing to do more.

Michael Gibbons, from Oradell, New Jersey, who leads the club, explained: "The one thing I love seeing is that everyone there, they don’t do it for their resume. They’re doing it because they love to do it and because they want to help the kids out." His concept for the club was inspired by his time at the University of Delaware, where he first felt a sense of belonging. The experience changed his career focus from transportation to prosthetics.

To find families benefiting from the club, Gibbons reached out to local pediatric physical therapists. Funding from the Rutgers University Student Assembly helped purchase riding toys and modification materials, allowing families to receive these toys at no cost.

Reflecting on a past showcase, Gibbons shared the joy: "It was like the best day of my life seeing everyone so happy, to actually receive the cars and see everything we’ve done with them."

Among the beneficiaries was 20-month-old Elyas Khalid from Montgomery Township, New Jersey, who lives with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Elyas’s father, Omar Khalid, stated: "Kids like him just want to be able to live as normal as possible and this car gives him that opportunity. It allows him to be more mobile."

Aaron Clarion, the vice president, led the project for Elyas’s car and noted the team’s motivation: "Initially it was an interesting opportunity for these students to be able to do something they hadn’t done before – do engineering work for something good. The moment they had started building the car, that’s when it clicked for a lot of them, that they really wanted to keep it going."

As graduates, Gibbons and Clarion are leaving the club, but Gibbons plans to expand A4A by establishing it as a nonprofit to facilitate its development at other universities. Regarding this ambition, Omar Khalid commented: "We live close to Rutgers, so it was easy for us to connect to them, but it would be wonderful if other families to have access to something like this."

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