Tuesday, June 22, 2010

One piece of technology from a volunteer engineer allows woman with CP in Canada to run her own flower shop

From Canwest News Service:


A 22-year-old Vancouver woman with cerebral palsy has started her own flower business after a volunteer engineer made a gizmo that enables her to strip leaves and cut stems with one hand.

Rebekah McGeer, 22, pictured, needed the device to be able to run Firefly Flowers. McGeer can only use of half of her body and cannot feel her left arm.

Her disability made arranging flowers into bouquets an enormous challenge. That was until engineer Marvin Pflug fashioned McGeer's device out of an old BMX bike break and some rubber.

"She has no finger control. So in order to hold a flower stem, she needs to hold it with something, so we came up with a clamping device," said Pflug.

The idea came from many years of helping his children fix their bicycles, he said.