I'm Alp. Born in 2008, from İzmir. A LEGO enthusiast and collector.

My entire childhood was spent building LEGO — I displayed LEGO sets in every corner of the house.

When I was 8 years old, in 2016, I became a big brother.

My sibling came into a world surrounded by LEGO sets in every room.

When she started crawling, my family was worried about LEGO pieces being on the floor.

But my sister seemed to instinctively know what to do with LEGO — instead of putting the pieces she found on the floor in her mouth, she would bring them to me.

When my sister was 3.5, she briefly attended preschool.

But then the pandemic hit.

When I was in 7th grade, schools closed and lockdowns began.

If it weren't for my sister and my love of LEGO, the pandemic in a small apartment would have been incredibly boring.

The pandemic era marked the beginning of turning my LEGO passion into projects.

Every day I would start and finish a set — eventually there were no new sets left to build.

On top of that, I started making stop motion videos with LEGO and developing projects.

For these videos I would take hundreds of photos, and I'd give my sister the job of pressing the shutter button.

While showing my sister handwashing tutorial videos, I decided to make my own stop motion video using LEGO pieces.

I sent my video to LEGO.

When they shared it, I received many positive responses at an international level.

That's when I truly experienced the impact LEGO can have on social projects.

Then I read the criticism under handwashing tutorial videos by major organizations about water waste.

That's when the idea came to me — combining my LEGO passion with my Arduino knowledge to create projects that solve social problems.

A smart faucet that teaches water conservation through handwashing rules, a smart test book addressing inequality of opportunity in remote education during the pandemic, a scratch-based game where math formulas are taught with LEGO, a smart traffic light for disadvantaged groups...

Through all these projects, I achieved various successes and received awards.

The common thread was using LEGO as a tool I could transform into anything to create solutions for social problems.

The pandemic ended. Schools reopened. My sister started preschool again. When she started, she went happily without any difficulty.

A month after school started, the preschool called my family in. They said my sister participated in all games, was happy, but never spoke — and that we should seek professional help.

We had never noticed anything like this. During the pandemic, my sister spoke with the close family members we regularly saw.

We attributed her not speaking to unfamiliar people to her young age and shyness.

With the warning from her preschool teachers, my family took my sister to a psychiatrist.

In September 2021, when my sister was 5 years old, we encountered a diagnosis we had never even heard of before: Selective mutism... My sister began weekly play therapy.

Then I read the criticism under handwashing tutorial videos by major organizations about water waste.

That's when the idea came to me — combining my LEGO passion with my Arduino knowledge to create projects that solve social problems.

A smart faucet that teaches water conservation through handwashing rules, a smart test book addressing inequality of opportunity in remote education during the pandemic, a scratch-based game where math formulas are taught with LEGO, a smart traffic light for disadvantaged groups...

Around the same time, I learned that my projects had reached the finals of various competitions. I couldn't attend some of them. But when my smart faucet project made it to the finals of Turkey's biggest technology competition, we went to Trabzon for four days with my family.

That's where we truly learned what selective mutism means — by living it.

For 4 days, my sister didn't speak to anyone outside of us.

Even when others were next to us, she only spoke to us by whispering in our ears.

She played with her teachers without speaking, communicating through gestures. Families were not allowed into the project presentation area.

Despite this, my sister would hold her teachers' hands and come to me.

We were presenting projects to juries and students from other schools.

When a question came about my LEGO faucet design, video, or model, my sister actually wanted to answer it.
She would tug at my shirt from below, wanting me to bend down to her height and extend my ear.

She would whisper her own answer in my ear. She really wanted to speak, but she couldn't.

Once, when she tugged at my shirt to whisper to me, I snapped at her saying "Wait a minute." I never forget the tears in her eyes.

In fact, it was during this very project presentation that I witnessed the power of play on children through personalized minifigures — the origin of Mini-Talks.

I thought about how hard it must be to go four days without speaking. I truly realized for the first time how difficult it was for my sister to be there for me.

She was my most precious person. I started doing silly things to make her laugh.

I had built a LEGO school design with a classroom, cafeteria, and bathroom to demonstrate how my faucet project would be used in schools.

I had also designed a minifigure that looked like my sister.

My sister would play with her minifigure in the school design.

She would act out listening to lessons in the classroom, going to eat in the cafeteria, washing hands, and going to the bathroom with other minifigures.

She would move her lips millimetrically, making the minifigures "speak" from within.

I would make up funny stories for her.

She would laugh while covering her mouth. She was even anxious about laughing out loud.

Then a really silly story happened. While my sister's minifigure was in the bathroom of my school design, I dropped small brown LEGO pieces into the toilet.

When I said "Who did this in the toilet?" — my sister couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing in public for the first time.

Maybe it was a silly story, but that's exactly the power of play — making you forget your anxiety.

From that day on, playing with minifigures in different sets and designs, making them talk to each other, became a passion for my sister.

And from that day on, I tried to be a big brother who always made her laugh, did silly things, and helped her overcome her speech anxiety.

After months of play therapy, she started playing with a minifigure and speaking to her psychologist in a quiet voice.

Then speech and language therapy also began.

She first said "cik" with her speech therapist.

In the second session, she said "kuş."

In the third session, she said "kuş uçtu."

By the fourth session, she started having back-and-forth conversations.

After that, all therapies continued with face-to-face speaking practice on the street, in restaurants, supermarkets — with complete strangers and people from our close circle.

Then all sessions continued outside the therapy room, as outdoor work on the street, including the wider circle.

When she first started speaking to strangers, we noticed she would constantly bunch up her shirt or lift her foot while talking.

This time, she started occupational therapy with the guidance of her speech therapist.

The bunched-up minifigure shirt design on the Mini-Talks customization screen comes from a detail of my sister bunching up her shirt during the period when she first started speaking.

My sister felt more comfortable in activities where I was also involved.

Sometimes she would insist to my family, "You want me to order at the restaurant because you want me to speak — I won't speak."

I would read her the menu in a funny way and pretend to faint from hunger. When I did that, my sister would order for me instead.

The pizza restaurant design in Mini-Scenes is an exact replica of the restaurant where my sister placed an order by herself for the first time.

Instead of doing bulk grocery shopping, we would go buy something small every day.

Thanks to the awareness and support of the staff there, my sister showed the number of grocery bags with her fingers for a long time. Then she started saying the numbers.

The grocery store design in Mini-Scenes is an exact replica of the market checkout where my sister spoke for the first time.

My sister didn't speak at school for 10 months.

During this time, the support of her teachers was very important.

She participated in all games, performances, and events without speaking.

In the first performance, she accompanied the choir with dances without even moving her lips. In the second performance, she moved her lips and mumbled along.

For the year-end show, my sister was given a role in the play that didn't require speaking.

In the individual poetry reading section, she was only going to carry flowers on stage.

But my sister started speaking at school just 2 days before the year-end show.

During the months she wasn't speaking, she had memorized all the poems at school without anyone noticing — yet neither we nor her teachers knew this.

In the last two days, she prepared and went on stage to read her individual poem, making all her teachers cry with happiness.

The school show and birthday party designs in Mini-Scenes are designs of events where children going through this process may struggle the most.

My sister started first grade, and I started high school.

My sister's biggest wish came true; we adopted a dog.

Besides the LEGO sets at home, we now had a living LEGO. We named him "Lego."

With Lego's help, we started doing speaking exercises with the vet and pet groomer.

My sister's therapies continued, now also including the wider circle.

My Turkish teacher, whom she saw every week and communicated with without speaking for 2 years, was also included in the sessions.

With her dedicated approach, my sister started speaking to her too.

Behind my teacher's book "SESSİZ MAESTRO," written to reference my sister's story and raise awareness about selective mutism, there is actually a long time and great patience.

After starting high school, I developed an award-winning app called "6-dot brick" that combines LEGO pieces and machine learning to teach the Braille alphabet for visually impaired people.

With this app, for the first time I placed LEGO pieces at the center of the solution by combining them with technology, rather than using them just as building blocks.

This made me believe I could do the same with Mini-Talks.

I was doing LEGO workshops with middle school students and working on the Braille alphabet using my app together.

My sister would also come to these workshops sometimes and build LEGO.

She would give the LEGO designs she created for them to feel through touch, and they would accept my sister's silence and play LEGO with her, talking to her.

Differences there weren't things that separated people — they were things that made understanding each other easier.

The process sometimes progressed with positive developments, and sometimes continued for a long time without any change.

During summer break, I went to an engineering camp at Oxford. I was constantly video-calling my sister.

She had made a calendar to count the days until my return, coloring in the days on the calendar.

Sometimes she would color extra to make me come back sooner, sometimes she'd forget to color and mess it up.

As a camp final project, I developed a smart counter that shows the number of remaining days for an event or occasion.

I made it as a LEGO-customizable design for children using Arduino.

I designed it as a reminder and habit-building device for preschool children and Alzheimer's patients.

I won the best engineering award; but more importantly, my sister was so happy saying "you made this counter for me."

At the end of this counter project, I decided to develop a project for my sister and all children going through this process. This was also a turning point for the Mini-Talks project.

During this period, I participated in several award ceremonies with my different LEGO-themed projects.

In all of them, my sister stayed by my side in crowded conference halls, clapping until her hands hurt from the front row — but didn't speak to anyone.

FIRST Lego League tournaments became a place that helped my sister overcome her anxiety in crowded environments.

Throughout high school, I volunteered at tournaments. My sister would come near the end of the tournament and watch me from a distance for years.

Over time, she won the hearts of all the volunteers.

The youngest volunteer became my sister.

Without speaking, she took on small tasks where she could feel comfortable.

At one tournament, she went on stage, announced the winning team's number, and presented the trophy.

Now she speaks at tournaments too.

This process showed me once again how people's approach can change a small child's life.

Last summer, I went to America for summer school. I ordered all the books about selective mutism to my dorm room.

The audio recordings of children's books read in my sister's own voice, found in the Resources section, are to give courage to children who cannot read and write and are going through this process.

From another summer school I attended in America, I brought a voice recording device (talk pad) as a gift for my sister.

Thanks to this device, my sister started speaking with some of my friends she had never spoken to before.

My friends were staying at our house. While we played console games, my sister would watch us, joining our conversation with laughter but without speaking.

When our football game ended, she would lean to my ear and ask "Is it time for the Lego console game now?" We would play for my sister.

One morning, she picked up the voice recorder and said "I'll ask." She recorded her voice saying "Shall we play Lego on Xbox?"

Holding her minifigure, she played this recording for my friends.

When they asked "Before or after breakfast?" — this time she answered "Before" directly.

Then she started speaking with them completely.

The idea of Brick-Talks and Fig-Talks — bringing together personalized scenes, minifigures, and voice recording devices — was born right here.

My sister is now 9 years old, and there's no one left she doesn't speak to.

What she wants to do most is voice acting. She started dubbing classes, and her voice sounds more confident every day.

She's just as excited about the Mini-Talks project as I am; she can now express what she felt during the times she couldn't speak, and she wants to support little children going through this process.