Gilford students, Blacktop Saints team up to help mobilize preschoolers

LACONIA — Freya is an outgoing kid who likes people, singing and anything with a motor. She also has mobility issues, which make it challenging for her to interact with peers at preschool, particularly at recess. So, she was thrilled to receive a vehicle of her own earlier this spring.

It wasn’t just any vehicle, either. It was an electric ride-on child’s truck, modified to specially suit Freya’s needs.

“She loves it,” said Kim Strand, Freya’s grandmother. Strand said Freya, who attends preschool at Woodland Heights Elementary, has challenges moving herself around. “She is in the process of learning to walk. She walks with a walker, and is working on walking and standing independently.”

That makes her the perfect recipient for a vehicle from GoBabyGo, a nationwide effort to provide the tools to enhance mobility for people who would otherwise have difficulty engaging with their world. GoBabyGo was launched at the University of Delaware, but has partner sites throughout the country, and Dan Caron’s engineering program at Gilford High School is one such partner.

Gilford students, thanks to financial support from the GiGi Johnson family and the Blacktop Saints Riding Club, built two mobility vehicles this year for students at Woodland Heights. Freya’s is one of them.

“It looks like a Jeep,” Strand said, which is a good thing in Freya’s mind. “They included a little trailer to pull behind it, they included a step to get into the vehicle, hand-controlled acceleration, a safety harness, custom paint job, and a rockin’ stereo.”

The vehicle is kept at Woodland Heights for now, but will come home with Freya for summer vacation.

The vehicle is something special for Freya, who uses it during recess to interact with classmates in play. It allows her to feel more included, Strand said, and “probably gives her some popularity at school.”

Strand has in mind a long list of benefits that will pay dividends even after Freya outgrows the vehicle. As a lover of all vehicles, Freya is highly motivated to operate her own ride. However, to do so she’ll need to sharpen her hand-eye coordination, steering ability, depth perception and spatial awareness. Of course, she probably won’t realize all she’s learning, she’s just excited to move.

“Independence is difficult to come by when you have a disability. She feels like she can do something for herself,” Strand said. She described her granddaughter as, “very lively, very personable, she likes people, she’s stubborn and she loves to sing,” especially “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “The Alphabet Song."

“She’s a tough little girl, very determined.”

Strand wanted to express “a huge thank you to the Blacktop Saints, and a thank you to Dan Caron, getting his class to participate in such a thing. It’s good for them to learn that they can really impact somebody else’s life through the skills that they are learning in high school, lessons in generosity, thinking about people with different situations.”

Caron said this batch of GoBabyGo vehicles was spearheaded by student project managers Katie Strickland and Carter Forest, who held a meeting with the teachers of the vehicle recipients to determine which modifications were necessary, then organized their teams to get to work. Some mods were for safety or to suit the driver’s capabilities, other touches were for personality, such as to reflect one preschooler’s love of puppies or, for the other, dinosaurs.

Gilford High students who participated in the build include Deacon Adams, Cole Berthelet, Alexander Bittle, Matthew Carter, Austin Champagne, Cameron Eaton-Bean, Georgia Eckhardt, Brayden Gardner, Michael Giovanditto, Alexander Gordon, Alexander Green, Michael Langley, Megan Legro, Alden Townsend and Evan Wilson.

Devin Barlow and Alan Heart, members of the Bravo Chapter of the Blacktop Saints Riding Club, presented the vehicle to Freya.

Barlow explained his has a mission of caring for others in need.

“This is the third year, I believe, Bravo has donated to the Gilford school GoBabyGo program. This year we donated $350 towards the program,” Barlow said. “Our mission is we are a family-first riding club that loves motorcycles, brotherhood and our communities, but our families most. We want to have a positive impact while enjoying our love for riding and family. What we get out of the charity work we do is the priceless smiles on those we bless and the awesome relationships we make from it. But I will say, Bravo couldn't do it without the help of the local people which we call our ‘Saints Nation’ that support us in our endeavors.”

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The Sunshine Effect is a new series in The Laconia Daily Sun highlighting the people and organizations working to improve our communities through volunteering and fundraising. We believe that telling their stories will encourage others to support their work, and launch new charitable efforts of their own.