Captain America, Wonder Woman and … Super Zach? If you haven’t heard of that last superhero, he can be identified by a fish-shaped toy guitar held close to his ear.
Unlike Captain America or Wonder Woman, Zach is a real person — a child with a history of seizures and who really does hold his guitar close to hear the music better. It’s those kinds of details that artists with The Superhero Project pay attention to when they draw children with disabilities in a new light.
“It was such a subtle shift that brought the personality of that hero forward. And somebody who knows him will know it [and] recognize that that’s the way that he plays it,” Matthew Minnich, year-long Board of Director and Associate Director of Online Services at the Cleveland Institute of the Arts (CIA) and one of The Superhero Project’s artists, said.
Minnich came across The Superhero Project in 2019 via a weekly CIA email, and decided to volunteer because he admired “giving kids opportunities to be kids.”
As a nonprofit organization, The Superhero Project “empowers youth impacted by serious illnesses, disabilities, community trauma, and other complex mental health or medical needs.”
Lisa Kollins, the founder and executive director gets to know her “clients” beyond their diagnoses by interviewing them with questions like “What do you love about yourself?” and “What would you like to fix in the world?” The organization then partners with artists to create posters that highlight each child’s “superhero mission” to better the world.
Since its inception, The Superhero Project has grown beyond its hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio to the United Kingdom and Canada, and helped over 1650 families.
The Superhero Project first started as a children’s activity at Camp Sunrise — a summer camp for children with HIV/AIDS — where Kollins worked as a counselor and program specialist in 2016. After asking the young campers to describe their “inner superhero,” Kollins had artists from across the country create superheroes for each child. On the last day of camp, Kollins surprised the campers with a slideshow featuring their personalized superheroes.
“I was just stunned at how with a little bit of information about the kids and one picture of them, [the artists] were able to somehow capture their spunk and their strength and their spirit and really show something special about them,” Kollins said.
Kollins continued her project while volunteering at the pediatric and adolescent oncology/hematology unit for University Hospital Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and Angie Fowler Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Institute. In 2020, Kollins turned The Superhero Project into a nonprofit entity and, a year later, left her position at the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University to direct the organization full time.
Kollins shared that The Superhero Project has amassed “somewhere between 650 and 700 artists from six continents” who work as video game designers, illustrators, animators, comic book and amateur artists. The Superhero Project has been featured at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch at the Cleveland Public Library, the Waterloo Arts Gallery in the Collinwood neighborhood in Cleveland, the North Canton YMCA, the IRTF/Young Latino Network’s Liberation Lab (Cleveland) and other local Cleveland locations.
Artists who volunteer for the Superhero Project take great care in making each child’s alter ego specific to that person.
“From head to toe, we ask questions: ‘So what color, or colors, do you want on the top … part of the outfit? Is it short sleeves or long sleeves?’” Kollins said. “If what they want to do is to clean up the oceans, then we specifically say, ‘Okay, well how are you going to clean up the oceans? Do you need a giant vacuum cleaner?’”
The Superhero Project’s mission is especially meaningful in Ohio — a region that has a significant population of children with disabilities.
The University of Cincinnati Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCCEDD) found in 2021 that about 23.5% of children in Ohio had at least one type of disability. The average rate of overall disabilities in the Midwest is 13.1%.
Despite the fact that about 1 in 4 children in Ohio have a disability, 98% of U.S. school districts reported that they were experiencing a shortage for special education resources. In 2020, Ohio alone reported that the teacher-to-student ratio for special education is 1 to 18.5.
Organizations like The Superhero Project work to help assuage educational disparity through representation. According to Kollins, reimagining youth with disabilities as superheroes provides confidence and empowerment whilst also educating those without disabilities.
Stephanie Stewart and her son Alijah Jones can attest to the self-confidence The Superhero Project produces.
Stewart is a proud single mom of three. Her son, Alijah, is diagnosed with cerebral palsy and low vision. Stewart and Jones both encountered The Superhero Project after Youth Challenge, an organization that encourages teens with disabilities to engage in sports, nominated Jones to have an interview with Kollins in 2019.
Since 2019, Jones has spoken at exhibits at Kent State and University Hospital to share his superhero, The Blue Warrior Mask Knight Rider, and what the organization has done for him.
“[The Superhero Project] allows that child to escape,” Stewart said. “We look at the alter-ego and that imagination that they have, and let them not think about what’s going on with them,” Stewart said.
In the future, Kollins hopes to create trading cards — a great way for nonverbal children or children with physical disabilities to carry around a conversation starter and make friends.
“Families can use [the trading cards] to give to other kids, to give to new teachers, to give to medical providers, new therapist,” Kollins said.
Minnich also mentioned wanting to create coloring books of the superheroes they’ve created “that can be used as a gift to donors or as a fundraising [opportunity].”
Young people feel a sense of pride seeing their unique personality and aspirations made into reality. Kollins hopes these posters will help others see the true power these children possess, and also hopes to expand her work to include other populations that might feel marginalized or different.
“It’s also really important for people who don’t look like [the children] to challenge some of their assumptions about young people in different situations, and really invite them to think about young people in a different way.”
This story was updated on September 9, 2024 to reflect additional details given by an interviewee.
Great article. Thanks for lifting up the creative possibilities of empowering these wonderful young people!
Important information is communicated here. Thank you Cydney Macon for this article and your honest yet, compassionate reporting of this project! I learned so much and will pass it along to others in my network!!
Well done great writing keep doing what you doing
What an amazing article. These are the real everyday hero’s that inspire us all.
What an interesting topic and article. As my mother would say, you should learn something new everyday and this article shows a new enlightening subject. Thanks Ms. Macon!
Good show