New Zealand Dad Fashioned Prosthetic Eye For Daughter Using YouTube Video

In what may be the most life-affirming instance yet of a YouTube viewer harnessing the platform for a DIY project, a New Zealand father named Dwayne Collins taught himself how to make a prosthetic eye for his daughter, who suffers from a rare developmental disorder.

Collins’ daughter, Liberty, was born with microphthalmia — a rare condition that left her with one eye significantly smaller than the other — and the family struggled to find her a prosthetic that fit well and wasn’t tremendously painful. Despite the fact Collins, an oil rig worker, had no previous medical experience, he stumbled upon a YouTube video one day by the renowned British ocularist John Pacey-Lowrie that detailed the production process. After six months of experimentation in a makeshift workspace in his backyard shed, Collins mastered the technique.

That’s not where this inspirational story ends. Given that he’d become something of a natural, Collins opted to spend his life savings to train as Pacey-Lowrie’s apprentice in the U.K., and subsequently opened up his own prosthetic eye consultancy in Australia with his wife, Ashleigh

, called Oculus Prosthetics. Collins is also launching his own YouTube channel to help spread the very knowledge that helped change his family’s life.

“The more I worked on Liberty’s eyes, the more I thought about helping other people in need,” Collins writes in a Google blog post. “I didn’t want anyone to go through the pain our family did. Learning this craft went from being a necessity to a passion to an entirely new career.”

Check out a Google-produced video chronicling Collins’ stunning journey right here: