By Darren Johnson
Campus News
A student at Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY, recently won the Blackstone Launchpad Consumer Products and Services category, and was awarded with $10,000 for her innovative, inclusive design. Gesy Duran, 35, was raised in the Dominican-American Washington Heights community and currently resides in Harlem. She struggled through many debilitating chronic illness symptoms caused by Chronic Pancreatitis whilst attempting to gain her education, and would spend the rest of her life with major health problems. Her perspective on life began to shift dramatically, as her health declined and day to day tasks became more unmanageable. Candidly she claims, “I did not let my disability stop me. Actually, my disability motivated me to push myself to be the person I wanted to be. Before I was in a wheelchair, I was a nursing student and only needed to take 10 more classes before graduating.” As time went on, though, Duran’s symptoms did escalate, and she became wheelchair bound and paralyzed after surgical complications. Through all of the adversities and pain she experienced, her optimism did not fade, in fact it helped her to express gratitude for her existence and the people around her in a much more genuine way. Duran says that when she got the news that she was paralyzed from her medical team she was grimly reminded that, “life was too short.”
Following her diagnosis, Duran set her high spirits on a new goal: learning how to walk and gain mobility again. She devoted herself fully to this project and kept her spirits high at all times. When she accomplished this goal, she moved on to new horizons: getting back to her old routines and regaining some sense of normalcy after her life was turned upside down. She says, “The next step for me was to live my life, the life I had before. And that was going to school, playing sports, going out with friends, hanging out.” Duran expresses the shift between having an invisible and visible disability and how people began treating her differently when she became wheelchair bound.
Instead of becoming disheartened by all of the challenges in her new life, Duran expressed the organic liberation that came along with her disability, “It is like people who embrace their deafness, and they start saying, okay I am deaf, I am going to join this whole sign community. They feel much happier after that, you have to be comfortable with yourself.” Currently Duran, her wife and young daughter are proud advocates for people with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ community. The design that earned her a prestigious award and $10,000 encompasses her unbridled passion for inclusivity and accessibility. The idea first came to her when she went out to eat with her family and found that she could not fit her wheelchair under the table in a comfortable position. Duran had seen other wheelchair users struggling with this issue at restaurants frequently and felt compelled to help change the narrative. She did this by creating “Wheel-Eating,” a portable tray that adjusts to just about any table and allows wheelchair users to experience dining out with ease. Currently, her invention is still in the prototype stage, but has much interest from manufacturers. Duran hopes that her invention will help people in wheelchairs to embrace being part of the public and enjoy dining out with friends and family again. Accessibility in New York City is already a challenge, as overpopulation and tight spaces have been an issue for decades. Yet, a whopping three million New York City residents have a disability, despite the avid lack of accessibility just about everywhere in the metro area. An open doors study in 2003 found that diners with disabilities would spend $35 billion dollars in restaurants that year – contributing heavily to the food and drink industry. The study also identified that only 75% of people with disabilities eat out once a week, which is significantly lower than people without disabilities, likely because of the lack of accessibility.
Duran is continuing to embrace her passion of helping others. She is currently enrolled in a Social Work program at Lehman College, and she hopes to eventually get her master’s and PhD to open her own practice. As far as inventing goes, Duran is very much inspired to continue creating products for people in wheelchairs, “I would like to continue with my products and making things for people in wheelchairs. Right now I am working on a second prototype.” Her unstoppable work ethic and drive to raise awareness are some of Duran’s most vibrant and valuable assets.
She says, “I just want to keep inventing. This world was not created for people like us, so we have to create a world for us.”
Facebook Comments