History
In 1993, Dr. Alireza Khorsand was invited to serve as a translator for a refugee family with a child facing enormous medical challenges. During this experience he and co-founder Susan Carlson-Khorsand were quickly drawn to the enormity of scale in children's hospitalizations. As they developed their relationship with hospital staff, they both witnessed the importance peer-support had for healthcare workers use as a therapeutic resource for their patients along with the difficulty they had in sourcing it for their loneliest patients. In fact, the majority of modalities available to offer support to sick children were, among many factors, industrially produced, created in a foreign country and required a trip to the store to purchase them. This, coupled with the fact that some children's rooms were chock full of these types of products (toys, balloons, and plush animals), the majority of children were without any evidence of community support.
This began the founder's discussions on the social value of engaging youth in a "hands-on" opportunity to produce a product symbolizing a recognized and highly valued healing commodity - peer-support.
To that end, they combined their experience with their observations to develop a key product to offer critically important psycho-social support to pediatric inpatients through an accessible, turn-key production process that would act as a platform increasing skills in teamwork, health literacy, workforce readiness, life skills and opportunities for participating youth.
Learning experience:
We started very, very small through the development of a prototype. Susan Carlson-Khorsand worked with hospitals to find the perfect pattern and shape for the hat (to fit over bandages, halos and body casts as well as adjustable for small and large heads) and modified it to a twelve-step production line for youth who have never sewn before. We really want youth to feel success, for many, this is the first time anyone has asked them to help or considered that they have something to offer. Susan presented the prototypes to the hospitals for approval and together they developed the hats use as a therapeutic resource. Early on, we discovered that the hats had the maximum effect on hospitalized children when made by teenagers.
It was equally interesting for us to see that teens made a big effort to participate in the project. As we began, we offered the workshops in different settings in our community. We carried the assembly-line around in the back of a truck and set it up in community youth centers to get an idea of the challenges the project would face. The positive impact the assembly-line system of production had was that youth quickly understood that if they didn't engage individually, the line would "peter out". The necessity for "all hands on deck" participation was very exciting. It was obvious that the students came to a "hands-on" understanding of the basic principles of economics (cost, time, and movement), resource allocation, and business process management. The simple understanding of personal productivity in terms of hat production, as well as in regards to the importance of their place in this project is a huge asset youth "take-away". Because youth are viewed as an asset, the paradigm changes for them, we can literally see them blossom as they envision their potential and interest in continuing their education, life-long, and self-directed learning opportunities.
