National 4-H winner from Minnesota turns toy cars into mobility devices for kids

CATHY WURZER: Well, here's some fun news. The National 4-H Council announced the winners of the National 2023 Youth in Action Awards earlier this month, and Minnesota is home to one of those wonderful winners. Nicole Cash is a 20-year-old from Farmington, Minnesota, and she won in the STEM category for her work on a very special robot. Nicole is with us right now. Congratulations.

NICOLE CASH: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: You have to describe the robot you created. What does it look like?

NICOLE CASH: We converted a kids Power Wheels toy-- so a Power Wheels Wild Thing ride on car-- into a mobility device for a child. So it looks exactly like a Power Wheels Wild Thing car with a few modifications and custom colors.

CATHY WURZER: Love it. Why did you want to build a mobility device for kids?

NICOLE CASH: We were actually a competition robotics team, so we weren't anticipating on doing that. But we were approached by a family member in our community who was really in need of a mobility device for their son. They had seen the nonprofit Go, Baby, Go somewhere on the internet and asked if we could do something similar. And I think my experience in 4-H really prompted me to have my team take the service above self and complete that project for them.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, how did you get into robotics? I'm curious.

NICOLE CASH: I actually didn't plan on being in robotics. I was an athlete in high school, and I suffered an injury, so I wasn't able to play soccer anymore. And my siblings were in robotics, so I was forced to sit in the high school basement and wait for them to be done before I could get a ride home.

And I decided since I was going to be there, I might as well be doing something useful. So I joined the robotics team, and I fell in love with it from there.

CATHY WURZER: And I understand you're in college now at Northern Michigan?

NICOLE CASH: Yes, that's correct.

CATHY WURZER: Are you working in robotics there?

NICOLE CASH: I'm not. I'm actually a biology major.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Good. But you obviously have an aptitude for robotics.

NICOLE CASH: Yes, entirely. I love STEM as a whole.

CATHY WURZER: I am curious about how you got into 4-H. Usually, most people think of 4-H as being for rural young people. You and I were talking off air. I was a city 4-H-er, and you're kind of suburban, rural. How did you get involved in 4-H?

NICOLE CASH: Yes, I definitely also thought it was very much like a farm kid club. But one of my best friends Garrett Berg introduced me to it when we were 10 years old, and he forced me to tag along definitely through some positive peer pressure. But I agreed to go anyway, and I met so many cool people there that I decided it was worth sticking around.

CATHY WURZER: Did you find as did I that it was one of the few places you could be yourself?

NICOLE CASH: Yes, entirely.

CATHY WURZER: And what does that mean to you? What did it mean to you?

NICOLE CASH: It kind of felt like a home away from my home. It was a place where not only could I be myself, but I could see other people being themselves, and we could just grow through life together and just kind of build ourselves as characters and as humans.

CATHY WURZER: What's your pitch for a young person to be involved in 4-H?

NICOLE CASH: I would say that they should get involved in 4-H because it is a place where you can develop something that I like to call transferable skills. It's something that you can't really get outside of youth development programs, and those are things like competence and public speaking and just the skills that you use to build yourself as a person besides like the hard skills that you learn from public education.

CATHY WURZER: It's clear that you're using your skills here now. You won. You have this $5,000 scholarship. You're serving this year as a national spokesperson for 4-H, so it's obvious you're using these skills to kind of spread the word.

NICOLE CASH: Yes. I feel like I use these skills pretty much every day.

CATHY WURZER: So tell me more about the project. You're going back now to the robotics project, that one. Do you see this maybe being used in the marketplace?

NICOLE CASH: I think it has potential to be. But something that my team and I really pride ourselves in is making it accessible to people. So when we create mobility devices, all of them are free of cost to families. They're fully funded through sponsorships from other community members. So although I think it could have a place in the marketplace, I think it's more beneficial when it's available to people at no cost.

CATHY WURZER: OK. So if someone's listening right now and they do have a small child with a mobility issue, can they get in touch with you?

NICOLE CASH: Yes, absolutely. Our robotics team has a website, team2987.com. There's a tab on there titled Go, Baby, Go, and there's a contact form available so you'd be able to reach out to our team representatives and get in contact with us.

CATHY WURZER: Go, Baby, Go. I love that. What a great name.

NICOLE CASH: Yes. It's actually the name of the nonprofit that was started out of the University of Delaware, so we maintain just a chapter of it.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Say, by the way, what's next for you? I'm curious. You're a biology major. What do you see on your horizon.

NICOLE CASH: Yeah, I'm currently a biology major, and I also have a minor in outdoor recreation, so I'm really hoping to be able to open my own nature center and run community programming.

CATHY WURZER: Wow, I love that. That'll be really interesting. And you're at Northern Michigan, which is a great place in order to enjoy the outdoors.

NICOLE CASH: Yes, entirely.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Nicole, really appreciate your time here today. Thank you for the conversation. And again, congratulations. What fun that you won.

NICOLE CASH: Thank you so much.

CATHY WURZER: That was Nicole Cash, a winner of the 2022 4-H Youth Action Award.