Learning real world skills while helping those in need

Fargo, ND (WDAY TV) - Students from NDSU are getting a life lesson about volunteering and helping people in need. At the same time, they're getting the skills they'll eventually need in the real world. Freedom by Design is a group made up of architecture students. Its goal is to find people in the Fargo area with disabilities or financial problems.

The students then use their college skills to make someone's life easier.

"We get to see this design become a reality, which we don't get to do in the studio or any other phase of our life quite yet."

The group's first project is building a wheel chair ramp for a Fargo man who struggles to do the simple things in life like getting out of his home. His disease is forcing him to not work so seeing these students build and pay for the project is emotional.

Corky Titus has a nerve condition that started in the tips of his limbs and continues to grow closer to the center of his body, making getting out of the house a difficult chore until now. He says what these students are giving him is freedom to move around.

“I’m humbled at what these guys are doing I mean this is all their time.”

Corky can not feel anything from his fingertips to his elbows and toes to his knees. His only way to leave his home is making a treacherous 20 foot walk to and from his vehicle, but that is changing. With excitement and emotion, Corky says he has a life long appreciation for this group.

“I’m a member of this community. That they saw that I had a need and they're solving it and that's what a city and a village and a town whatever it is, is.”

The ramp won't cure everything. Corky lives in constant pain. He says it's like being run over with a truck all of the time, but pain or not it will help this tough guy live.

“I decided when this pain just started crushing me and doing things I wasn't going to lay down and die, I just can't do that.”

Instead he says he does what he can, by being a father, a husband and a member of a community he speaks so highly of. And soon, when the ramp is finished, Corky will be free to do what he wants when he wants. Corky's family is holding a benefit for him on November 22nd at Oak Grove's Eid Center. The event will run from 9 to 2.