Unlimited Tomorrow, a prosthetics company, is raising funds to send 100 3D-printed bionic limbs to Ukrainians injured in the Russian Invasion.
Unlimited Tomorrow was founded in 2014 by Easton LaChappelle of Colorado, when he was 17. He’d been tinkering with robotics and 3D printing since he was 14. After talking to the parents of a girl with a simple prosthetic and learning that it cost them $80,000 – the price of a home in his area – he decided he could do better.
In 2016, his company put its first prosthetic arm on a patient, a 10-year-old girl named Momo who was born without her right arm below the elbow.
Now, Unlimited Tomorrow is teaming up with Singularity Group, a charitable organization from California, to get LaChappelle’s prosthetics to Ukraine, to help dozens of Ukrainians who have been critically injured in Russia’s invasion.
“Estimates of the number of wounded civilians range from around 4,600 by the UN to tens of thousands by authorities on the ground. Hundreds of people have lost their limbs,” says a statement by the partnership.
“Their lives have been destroyed completely in this war, and they just need help and are looking for help. So, that’s where we can come in,” says Jennifer Barbic, of Unlimited Tomorrow.
“We sent a scanner to an emergency hospital in Ukraine, and the doctor was trained in a couple minutes. Two minutes later, we had the scans here of the arm, the limb difference and we’ve already shipped our sockets within about a week,” says Steven Van Fleet, also of Unlimited Tomorrow.
Unlimited Tomorrow and Singularity Group are running a GoFundMe together to raise $1 million to fund these prosthetics, which cost between $5000 and $10,000 each, and the costs of either getting them to Ukraine or bringing recipients to the States for fitting.
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