Our Community
At TOM Melbourne, we believe that together, we can make a meaningful impact. Whether you’re someone living with a disability who needs help solving a daily challenge, or someone who wants to use your skills to create innovative solutions, we invite you to join our community.
We bring together a diverse team of designers, engineers, health professionals, and creative thinkers.Â
To solve everyday challenges faced by people with disabilities. It’s all about co-creating practical, low-cost solutions that make life easier, more accessible, and more enjoyable.
Ways to Get Involved
Share a Challenge
Do you or someone you care about face daily challenges due to a disability? We co-design assistive technology to enhance hobbies, art, cooking, communication, gardening, and more - tailored to you.
Volunteer With Us
Do you like problem solving, innovating and thinking outside the box? We are looking for engineers, designers, software and hardware developers, health professionals, hobbyists and anyone with a passion for social change!
Upcoming Ways To Participate
Makeathons
The Makeathon connects Need-Knowers with teams of Makers to create assistive technology solutions. Prototypes developed at the Makeathon are available online for anyone around the world to access.
Developer Groups - Tom 2.0
Building on the success of the TOM: Melbourne Makeathons, Developer Groups represent phase 2 of the TOM process by upgrading prototypes into TOM Products. Small teams of Makers work regularly for 12-weeks alongside Need-Knowers at our partner makerspace.Â
Tom @ Schools
Our TOM @ Schools program offers a unique program teaching students about disability and assistive technology, utilising empathy and creative problem-solving skills. The program includes Disability Awareness led by a guest speaker, design thinking and prototyping to solve real challenges related to accessibility, and student presentations.
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“They’ve just been awesome, you can tell the effort they’re putting into it, they really want to come up with a solution that works for us [and Malu].
It’s heartwarming. It shows the love they have to help people with disabilities, and to create inclusiveness.”

“It’s nice to have a community around us and people that get it and just want to help make things easier [for him].”

“It’s a way to use my engineering skills to actually make a difference.Â
[So] to be able to work with people with disabilities and make accessible technology is a really fulfilling and rewarding way to use my skills.Â
It’s really special to be part of something that brings all these people together.”

“It’s always a very diverse group of very wonderful people coming up with a very weird range of very weird, wonderful and wacky ideas.Â
It always comes up with ideas that individually I’d never think of, and I love it.”

“It was a great experience, it (the prototype) was certainly what I needed”

“Being able to help someone with a disability by making life a little easier for them & working with expert professionals all with the same goal has been amazing – TOM: Melbourne Makeathon 2019”

“TOM personifies inclusive, creating and collaborative skill sharing… these philosophies weave together seamlessly at the Makeathon”