Albert Manero and a team of engineering students at University of Central Florida have designed a prototype for an electric arm. Six-year-old Alex Pring was the first recipient. When Cynthia Falardeau read about Alex Pring, she had made peace with her son Wyatt’s limb difference. Her premature baby had been born with his right arm tangled in amniotic bands. At a week old, doctors amputated his dead forearm and hand. They were afraid his body would be become infected and he would die. Falardeau mourned her boy’s missing arm for years, but in time, embraced who her son was. They tried a couple of prosthetics when he was younger, but the toddler abandoned the false limb within months.

“His main interest was to create a shocking response from onlookers by pulling it off in the grocery store,” Falardeau wrote on CNN iReport

When Falardeau read a story about the students and graduates that made an electronic arm for 6-year-old Pring using a three-dimensional printer on campus, his mother was defensive. “He doesn’t need that,” she told CNN.

Her fifth-grader had a different reaction: “I want one of these robot arms!” Falardeau remembers Wyatt telling her and her husband. “I could ride a bike! I might even be able to paddle a kayak!” There were other things the 12-year-old boy said he would do if he had two hands: A proper somersault, clap with two hands, dance with a pretty girl with one hand on her back and the other leading. Stuff his mother hadn’t really thought about, but he clearly had.

Falardeau got in touch with the Orlando students through E-Nable, an online volunteer organization started by Rochester Institute of Technology research scientist Jon Schull, to match people who have 3-D printers with children in need of hands and arms. The organization creates and shares bionic arm designs for free download at EnablingTheFuture.org that can be assembled for as little as $20 to $50. Middle and high school student groups and Girl and Boy Scout troops are among those donating their time and materials to assemble limbs for kids and give them to recipients for free.

The team has made electronic arms for five children and is working with three more kids including Wyatt. He traveled with his mom to UCF last week and practiced flexing his muscle to make the hand open and close. He expects to get fitted with his new arm later this month. His mom, Cynthia, was most excited about seeing Wyatt being celebrated for who he is.

“The adoration of college students was an affirmation that money can’t buy. He was wrapped in the joy of leading and advising students on how to help children like himself,” she wrote in her iReport. “Wyatt felt like he was making a difference for himself and other children.”

As they got ready to leave the campus, her son told her he couldn’t wait to see what he will accomplish with his new arm. And someday, he said, he wants to go to UCF and help other kids like him.