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

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

When my brother was 3.5, he 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 brother 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 brother the job of pressing the shutter button.

While showing my brother 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 brother started preschool again. When he started, he went happily without any difficulty.

A month after school started, the preschool called my family in. They said my brother 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 brother spoke with the close family members we regularly saw.

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

With the warning from his preschool teachers, my family took my brother to a psychiatrist.

In September 2021, when my brother was 5 years old, we encountered a diagnosis we had never even heard of before: Selective mutism... My brother 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 brother didn't speak to anyone outside of us.

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

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

Despite this, my brother would hold his 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 brother actually wanted to answer it.
He would tug at my shirt from below, wanting me to bend down to his height and extend my ear.

He would whisper his own answer in my ear. He really wanted to speak, but he couldn't.

Once, when he tugged at my shirt to whisper to me, I snapped at him saying "Wait a minute." I never forget the tears in his 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 brother to be there for me.

He was my most precious person. I started doing silly things to make him 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 brother.

My brother would play with his minifigure in the school design.

He 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.

He would move his lips millimetrically, making the minifigures "speak" from within.

I would make up funny stories for him.

He would laugh while covering his mouth. He was even anxious about laughing out loud.

Then a really silly story happened. While my brother'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 brother 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 brother.

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

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

Then speech and language therapy also began.

He first said "cik" with his speech therapist.

In the second session, he said "kuş."

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

By the fourth session, he 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 he first started speaking to strangers, we noticed he would constantly bunch up his shirt or lift his foot while talking.

This time, he started occupational therapy with the guidance of his speech therapist.

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

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

Sometimes he 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 him the menu in a funny way and pretend to faint from hunger. When I did that, my brother would order for me instead.

The pizza restaurant design in Mini-Scenes is an exact replica of the restaurant where my brother placed an order by himself 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 brother showed the number of grocery bags with his fingers for a long time. Then he started saying the numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the last two days, he prepared and went on stage to read his individual poem, making all his 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 brother started first grade, and I started high school.

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

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

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

Behind my teacher's book "SESSİZ MAESTRO," written to reference my brother'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 brother would also come to these workshops sometimes and build LEGO.

He would give the LEGO designs he created for them to feel through touch, and they would accept my brother's silence and play LEGO with him, talking to him.

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 brother.

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

Sometimes he would color extra to make me come back sooner, sometimes he'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 brother 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 brother 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 brother stayed by my side in crowded conference halls, clapping until his hands hurt from the front row — but didn't speak to anyone.

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

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

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

The youngest volunteer became my brother.

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

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

Now he 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 brother'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 brother.

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

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

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

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

Holding his minifigure, he played this recording for my friends.

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

Then he 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 brother is now 9 years old, and there's no one left he doesn't speak to.

What he wants to do most is voice acting. He started dubbing classes, and his voice sounds more confident every day.

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