The Medical Monkeys project, founded by Maya Morcos, Amir-Ali Golrokhian-Sani, and Angela Li, all HealthSci ’23 graduates is dedicated to offering comfort and representation to children facing medical challenges. Later ed by Bassam Jeryous Fares at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine, the team offers crocheted toy monkeys, paired with custom 3D-printed assistive devices, such as prosthetics and hearing aids that are crocheted on the monkeys to ensure the visibility of these procedures.
Based in Ottawa, the team collaborates with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario to identify common medical conditions such as prosthetic limbs, cochlear implants, tracheostomy tubes, and glasses. Using CHEO’s list of most common procedures, they craft crocheted monkeys tailored to young patients’ needs, with Ottawa volunteers hand-making each toy.
“The general idea of the project is to create toys that normalize various assistive devices for children because generally, you don’t see many [toys like ones with representation of children’s diseases] at big stores like Walmart. Some of these procedures can be traumatic for children—we were hoping to create something that was kind of ,” Golrokhian-Sani said in an interview with The Journal.
Representation remains at the heart of the foursome’s mission. By creating toys that reflect children’s different medical journeys, Medical Monkeys aims to foster a sense of belonging and normalcy for young patients who may not see themselves represented in mainstream toys or feel different from their peers and their families.
“When you’re in that vulnerable of a situation and you feel that you look different from your peers and even your family , that’s a point to make to say representation does matter,” Morcos said.
The initiative was born from the group brainstorming ways to combine their medical studies with their personal interests and skills. Morcos shared that her ion for crocheting became a meaningful tool when she realized she could use it to make a positive impact on children’s lives, bringing about change and “putting a smile on their face.”
“These are completely, from start to finish, made from scratch,” Morcos said. “We do have a few people volunteering helping crochet, which has been so lovely, but we crochet the monkeys then use the 3D-printer that we have access to in our library and make the prosthetics.”
Last semester, the team crafted and delivered nine crochet monkeys. Thanks to the from a dedicated group of 22 volunteers, they’ve already completed 28 monkeys this semester. Mocros is optimistic this number will continue to grow, potentially tripling as more people their efforts.
The team plans to expand their project across Canada, including Kingston and invites students to get involved with both the team and Exhibit Change. This club uses creative approaches to raise awareness about social issues, including the Medical Monkeys initiative and the effort to normalize medical procedures such as a tracheostomy and gastrostomy tube insertions, and rotationplasties—a surgical procedure that replaces a knee t with an ankle t.
“I’ve learned through this project that advocacy can be really big, but it can also be really small and individualized. We’re not making mass-producing monkeys for every kid who needs one—although that would be amazing—but with every single monkey, we’re just hoping that it would bring one person enough confidence or joy or whatever they might need at that moment in time, and lift them up,” Morcos said.
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