Stand With Me Newsletter 1: June 21st, 2015

Meet the Team &

Our Goals

From Left to Right: Riley Lieber, Emily Donaldson, Scott Mitchell, and Alejandra Covin

Emily and Riley working on the shop bot

Thayer

Riley, Alejandra and Scotty at

A Short History
Almost every second a child is born with cerebral palsy (CP), which is
the leading cause of childhood disability worldwide, affecting more
than 17 million people. A third of children born with CP will have limited
or no walking ability, leading to health complications and
developmental delays. Although there is no cure, daily weight-bearing
activity can significantly increase quality of life. Standing frames
currently available on the market are inaccessible to many families due

to their exorbitant cost and complex parts. This leaves patients without
the support they need for more normal development and a chance for
healthier bodies and engaged minds. The simple act of standing
provides children with more opportunities to interact, be part of
bustling households and schools, all while counteracting the serious
health repercussions of immobility. Here at Stand With Me, we have
devised a solution.
Working at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, we were
able to develop and produce a standing frame for only $50 using
universally available materials. After recognizing the potential impact
of such a device, our nonprofit was a natural extension of our initial
goal- to make low-cost, reparable standing frames available to families
everywhere. Since then, we have distributed seventy of these devices
that are currently being used with physical therapists in Peru (40),
Honduras (10), Guatemala (10), and China/North Korea (10). This
summer, we are traveling with a four-member team to Peru, Honduras
and Guatemala to follow up with the devices, gather user-feedback to
modify design elements, and begin planter programs. These
programs aim to shift the production of the devices from the United
States to local regions by implementing hands-on instruction of local
therapists in the safe production and maintenance of our devices for
their region. This program will allow physicians to better service their
local communities by relieving their dependence on our organization
for imported materials needed for the standing frames, and saves large
amounts of money that can be better spent elsewhere.
Our youth-led organization and team, with two Dartmouth engineers,
one grant writer, and a pre-engineering intern will spend the next two
months traveling abroad together. We will be working with physical
therapists, patients, community members and partner organizations to
ensure that as many children as possible can access the therapy they
need for happier, healthier lives!

Meet The Team

Scott C. Mitchell,

Executive Director

I am extremely honored and blessed to have the

opportunity to start Stand With Me, and to help
my friends and patients across the globe get the
medical care that they desperately need! I am
dual degree student between Bowdoin College
and Dartmouth College, where I am studying
biomedical engineering and biochemisty. I grew
up in Bangor, Maine and attended high school at
Kent School in Kent, Connecticut, where I
founded a chapter of a Christian group called
Fellowship of Christians in Universities and
Schools (FOCUS) (infocus.org). With the
unexpected passing of my sister, my high school years really gave me the
opportunity to rely on my faith and to begin a more personally motivated
relationship with God. During this time, I also continued to pursue my interest in
medicine with a Christian organization called Medical Ministry International (MMI)
(mmint.org) serving as an interpreter for teams in Peru, Ecuador, and the
Dominican Republic. In the summer of 2013, I served a three month
internship with MMI in Arequipa, Peru. My extensive involvement with MMI has
demonstrated to me that humanitarian service is most effective
when combined with Christian ministry. This combination serves both the physical
and spiritual needs of the patients, while providing volunteers a unique opportunity
to exercise their God given talents and cultivate a Christ-like heart.

Alejandra Vanessa Cuervo Covin,

Associate Design Engineer

Growing up in a developing country and then having

the opportunity to study at Red Cross Nordic United
World College in Norway and posteriorly at the USA,
I realized I had the chance of being a change maker
on my own community as well as the world. As a
student at the Thayer School of Engineering at
Dartmouth College and a double major in Physics
and Chemistry at Colby College, I am glad to have
joined the Stand With Me team and contribute to
help people around the globe who are in need of
medical care devices. I am grateful to be able to
have a positive impact on other peoples lives and
to be able to use my skills and knowledge to help
those in need. Moreover, I am grateful to be part of
Stand With Me and collaborate with a wonderful group of people to create change
and give others the opportunity to access technology in the form of medical devices
for the improvement of their quality of life.

Emily Donaldson, Grant Writer and Staff Journalist

As the daughter of a veterinarian, I came to understand the resiliency of life at an
early age. Watching my mother work bravely in the face of suffering, advocating for
animals and the environment, I learned from example that challenges present

opportunities for positive change. I was introduced to the great work that Stand With
Me does while on exchange at Dartmouth from Mount
Holyoke College in MA. Having majored in
Environmental studies with a pre-law track, I look
forward to using my skills to be an effective
intermediary between Stand With Me, other nonprofits,
businesses and donors. I am thankful to be a part of
this inspiring team and contribute what I can to help
others access necessary medical devices around the
world.

Riley Lieber,

Summer Engineering Intern 2015:

Through out my life I have been interested in
helping others, learning about engineering, and
making a lasting impact. When offered the
opportunity to join the Stand With Me team I was
overjoyed to be given a chance to do all three. As
a student at Kent School I have pursued the preengineering pathway, which has given me a strong
foundation on which to build my skills, and now I
am fortunate to have a chance to both use and
further develop those skills in a way that will
directly benefit others. The experience of working
in such an environment and around such
knowledgeable and kind people is one that I take
great pride in being a part.

Robert G. Mitchell, Director of Development

I am pleased to join my grandson in his endeavor to
assist young cerebral palsy children through these
low cost standers that enable them to have a better
chance at normal growth development! A Chemical
Engineering degree from Drexel Institute of
Technology was basic to my 30 year career as a
senior manufacturing officer executive. I then moved
into Unisys Corp as a manufacturing consultant. In
this capacity, I had the opportunity to study over 30
companies and was able to recommend how each might benefit profitably from the
use of new advanced management computer tools. A world traveler with my dear
wife, Alma, I have seen examples of extreme poverty. Helping Stand With Me provide
these standers worldwide to children of need is a privilege I cherish!

Project Updates
In the weeks leading up to our departure on June 21st, our team was hard at work
finalizing designs and cutting out the templates that will be used like giant stencils to
make it easy for people around the world to build their own standing frames! We
intentionally made the design simple, using materials like wood so that anyone with
access to basic hand tools can fix or replace a part if needed. We have also been
working on an instruction manual that we will distribute with the standing frames,
which will soon be translated into at least three other languages! In addition to
finalizing the template design, we wrote a grant proposal for a hundred thousand
dollars. It has been busy and rewarding for everyone involved.
Making final adjustments and wrapping up U.S-based assignments has been a fun
and stimulating process, requiring all hands-on-deck as we tried different design
iterations and ran between the computer assisted design lab, Dartmouths machine
shop, and hardware stores. It was great to be contacted by another organization
called CELIO de Amor in Nicaragua that provides classes for children with special
needs. They had been searching for standing frames online and had thought that the
only options came at an exorbitant cost until they came across ours! We are looking
forward to helping them establish a little shop so that we can produce standing
frames in Nicaragua as well, and are starting to search for material donors to help
make this exciting opportunity a reality!
Here are some photos of our patients, our team hard at work, taking a short break to
cool off in the Connecticut River!

A huge Thank You" to Hancock Lumber, Pompanoosuc Mills, Sunbury Village, and
everyone who has and continues to support us as we embark on this rewarding
mission! We work diligently to be efficient with all donations to help as many children
as possible.
If you know someone else who would like to stay updated about the progress of
Stand With Me, let us know!
Sincerely,
The Stand With Me Team