On a recent afternoon, about 25 volunteers sat tinkering with toys in a Verizon warehouse in Twinsburg, where the sound of Elmo’s voice was the sound of victory.
“Yes! Jackpot, baby,” said Brent Bumbaugh of North Canton as the tires on a toy car he put back together whirred in functional confirmation.
Bumbaugh, along with most others there, didn’t have any prior experience with modifying toys aside from taking them apart as curious kids. But at the RePlay for Kids workshop, they got firsthand experience with adapting everything from remote-controlled cars to talking Elmo toys.
“Surprisingly, these toys aren’t as complicated as I thought,” Bumbaugh said.
RePlay for Kids is an organization that works to increase the availability of toys for children with disabilities. The organization holds a few workshops a month to teach people how to add a more accessible switch on normal toys the kids wouldn’t be able to use otherwise.
“Mainly kids that will use these toys either have physical limitations that would keep them from reaching the switch, or kids with developmental disabilities who don’t understand cause and effect,” said Bill Memberg, who founded RePlay for Kids in 1999.
Workshops typically involve working with corporations that want volunteer hours, as was the case with Bumbaugh and other Verizon employees earlier this month. The toys from those workshops then are given away to families and agencies during their annual toy giveaway.
A few years ago, RePlay expanded to have a more direct relationship with the children who are helped through the program. The organization now hosts family workshops to teach the parents of kids with special needs how to adapt their own toys at home, sending them home with a kit to do it themselves.
The Millennium Fund for Children recently awarded RePlay a $1,000 grant to expand its free family workshop program. The Millennium Fund, operated by the Akron Community Foundation and launched by the Akron Beacon Journal, awarded 32 grants totaling nearly $42,000 to initiatives in Summit, Portage and Medina counties this year.
“It’s great because we’re developing these family workshops so the more that we do, the more official they’ll get,” Memberg said.
Most children’s toys work with a similar simple mechanism, so Memberg developed a way to teach an everyday person how to modify them with a larger exterior button for kids to press instead of a tiny switch.
The process does involve some tools, like a soldering iron and screwdriver, but Natalie Wardega, the organization’s director of operations, said most people pick up on the process pretty quickly. Beginners usually have their first toy done in an hour.
“It’s not that complicated,” Wardega said. “It’s learning something new.”
The kits include everything a family needs to modify several existing toys. The organization works with county agencies to identify families who would benefit most from the free workshops to alleviate the otherwise hefty cost of toys made for kids with disabilities.
“The price is unbelievable, so I don’t think we’d have many toys if we had to purchase them out of the toy magazine,” said Lorie McMullen of Akron.
McMullen’s 7-year-old daughter, Rakaya, has multiple special needs.
Rakaya loves toys that have lights or make sounds, which McMullen said encourage independent play and help with speech.
McMullen’s first encounter with RePlay was a few years ago when she participated in a family workshop. The organization surprised her with a kit to modify her own toys at home last year, “so that was a blessing,” McMullen said.
“I’m not that talented yet, so we’ll still go to workshops and do some there,” McMullen said. “They’re a blessing to many families.”
Theresa Cottom can be reached at 330-996-3216 or tcottom@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @Theresa_Cottom .