What We Do and How We Do It
CanDoAble leverages youth effort to launch initiatives targeting inequity wherever we see it.
Our efforts reflect our passion.
We focus on children, like us in every way, but who haven’t had opportunities.
We won’t rest until we bring change, one child at a time.
We believe learning is key.
We believe access to nutrition, role models, and quality healthcare are key enablers to learning.
We take lessons from what worked.
We are unafraid to try ideas never tried before.
Our strength is in our will.
Our levers are new technology, new ideas, and new thinking.
Starting small and dreaming big -
We see no limits to what we can launch and how far we can go.
What We Hear
Testimonials
“…outstanding in commitment to the causes they take on…”
“…innovative initiatives to support the needs of handicapped children…”
“…grateful for the help our children received the very first week in this new country, our new home…”
“Thank you to these young men who helped my wife see a doctor and get the medicines she needs. My family is grateful…”
“I love to hear what I cannot read!”
“You have infinite potential and talent to grow into a leader of our state”
What We’re Launching
About Us
Our view of our World: CanDoAble is, to us, the opposite of Disabled, made possible through enabling opportunity.
Our intent: A disability of any sort should not reduce important opportunities, so we address needs that can maximize opportunities.
Our example: Adi was a beautiful baby, born healthy, with no health issues. At 6 months, her mom noticed that her baby never seemed to be startled by loud sounds. She didn’t respond to her talking and did not babble like other babies did. After many misdiagnoses, Adi was found to have complete bilateral sensorineural hearing loss at the age of 11 months.
Our leverage: Things looked dark for Adi. The efforts of her parents, her own family and an even larger family of CanDoAble well-wishers acted as guides and contributed to finding a solution. They found doctors and a nurse who could address her needs. They made cochlear implants and speech therapy possible. Adi’s journey towards many future possibilities is underway!
Our approach: Our mission is to find solutions. CanDoAble works to address the needs of children like Adi, by brainstorming, finding volunteers who can offer advice, leveraging new and existing technology that offers the promise of a solution, and fundraising to implement those solutions—our aim is to connect problem solvers to problems children have addressing needs, educational or medical, and move on to solutions.
How about You? We are metro Detroit high schoolers, EnAblers. Read on to learn more about our many initiatives. Please support us with these causes. We welcome school-age volunteers who believe they Can Do too—tutor students, work in community outreach in our metro Detroit neighborhoods, and who have ideas to address issues of local and global importance.
Thanks!
Adnan Khan
Founder, CanDoAble and EnAbler
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Fellow EnAblers (Farhan, Tyler, Jerry, Sunny, Chase, Taha, Kim, Bala, Ruhi, Gibran, Jason, Saqlain, Aydin) and our mentors, supporters and collaborators!
Ongoing Initiatives
Leverage Our Launches!
Launch
Smart & Distance Learning
Home school tutor camp is an immersive learning experience for kids in Grades 6 through 8 that provides tutoring and homework help, especially in Math and Science, on weekends through Zoom. We can provide 1 hour weekend tutoring sessions based on need on both Saturdays and Sundays, with 24 hour notice. We would be happy to provide help with homework assignments. All our tutors are high schoolers who volunteer their time. All our tutoring is provided free of cost.
We also work closely with schools for children with special needs to find smart ways for physically handicapped children to learn. By sharing information on specific needs we have been able to both enlighten potential donors and use small targeted donations to provide smart boards, rehabilitation equipment, and lab supplies based on the needs of the schools.
Launch
Free Interactive Online Learning Tool –
For Users, By Users
Our resolution: No student should ever have to pay for online study tools or endure distracting ads while studying.
We, a small team of friends, have conceived, designed, coded, and implemented our dream learning site, Cramless.com. We have addressed a growing need we see for a free, high-quality learning tool for students everywhere, incorporating features based on memory patterns and active learning through a flashcard system. We are currently entering beta testing. We have added infinite test generation to allow dynamic learning and features customized to students.
Utilizing an API for seamless import from other sites allows on-demand access to 300 million study sets. Just six months from launch, we have registered student users representing 800 schools and universities internationally!
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Launch
Technology for the Blind/Visually Impaired and the Handicapped
I can pick any book to enjoy now!!
Venu, a 9-year-old born with congenital rubella, a condition that left him hearing impaired and blind from birth, can barely contain his happiness!
Venu was the first to pilot inexpensive new technology that promises invaluable independence and the ability to read, to children with severe vision impairment. He is a student in Chennai, India, who, along with his classmate, Anu, are two underprivileged children with severe sensory impairment who have been able to pilot a promising Smart Vision device developed as a low cost vision aid. It leverages machine learning and a simple sensor set in a wearable configuration.
Launch
Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program
The U.S. Department of State’s Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP) is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, implemented by Meridian International. This was a great initiative to be part of, and highly recommended for those interested in international diplomacy or international communication.
Meridian is a nonpartisan, nonprofit diplomacy center that connects leaders through culture and collaboration to help drive solutions for global challenges. Founded 60 years ago, Meridian has equipped thousands of leaders with the networks, insights and cultural context essential for non-partisan work on shared issues.
Launch
Vaccine Ambassadors Program
Globally, 1 in 5 children go without recommended vaccines each year.
1.5 million children die of vaccine preventable illness each year globally.
In the US while vaccines are available, vaccine hesitancy is on the rise.
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2-dose COVID vaccines prevent 90% of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID infections.
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If all adults were vaccinated, 319,000 deaths could have been averted, with cost savings from reduced hospitalization and avoidable medical costs amounting to $2.6 Billion.
Join us, the Vaccine Ambassadors, as we spread the facts about vaccines, and help promote their safety and efficacy.
Launch
Schoolhouse.world - Supporting Sal Khan's Initiative
Salman (Sal) Khan (founder of Khan Academy) founded a new initiative, Schoolhouse.world, as a platform for free, peer-to-peer tutoring–where anyone, anywhere can receive live help and build their skills. Sal realized what we had found too – that when schools transitioned to online learning during COVID-19 and students around the world craved more social interaction, access to personalized help become more inequitable than ever.
Having been invited to tutor other kids as part of this groundbreaking initiative (soon after Sal Khan began working on it with a small group of founding members) we’re thrilled to be part of this rapidly growing effort to support learning for children.
Launch
Detroit-area “Start School” kits
We are a group of concerned Detroiters looking to support the cause of hundreds of refugee families escaping the most horrific war in strife-torn parts of the world as they resettle and try to start their lives over in our Metro Detroit neighborhoods.
Many of these families' children are of varying ages and come from parts of the world where they have never learned English. To transition to school life in the US without support, understanding the language, or any school supplies is incredibly hard.
At CanDoAble, we are working with refugee children, mostly from Afghanistan, whose needs range from supplies, to clothes to wear to school, to help with learning.
Launch
Music to the Rescue!
As musicians, we all know how soothing music can be. There is a wealth of research that suggests that music helps the healing process. Early Greek philosophers such as Plato had already made the connection, Plato believing that it helped build up one’s psyche. Aristotle believed that music promoted a catharsis and was the path to overcoming feelings such as fear.
A Lancet article cites the effect of auditory analgesia, with a decreased need for pharmacological analgesia in patients undergoing painful dental procedures - if a patient was subjected to a very loud sound, the crescendo of which is under his or her control, the attention to the auditory stimuli would diminish the response invoked from the pain pathway once the dental procedure began.
We are believers too and volunteer to play often at senior homes and at Henry Ford Hospital.
Thoughts & Essays
Insights
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Efforts supported in Detroit by
