With a little help from her community, Essex Elementary School 4th grader Ava Cannan made the trip from Essex all the way to Dearborn, Michigan last weekend to the National Invention Convention and Entrepreneurship Expo event where she introduced judges to her Chicken Hands invention.

The expo, held at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, assembled 450 of the nation’s finest young entrepreneurs and their inventions.

“I loved seeing all the inventions through all the different stages of it, it was really cool,” said Cannan.

The idea for Chicken Hands came when Cannan was struggling to take care of her family’s six chickens. This daily struggle got her thinking.

“I should invent something that carries everything you need for a chicken,” Cannan recalled thinking. “It carries the food, the water, the calcium, it holds the treats and it brings the eggs back.”

From there, it was off to the drawing board and the work bench. She did accept some help from her dad and her grandmother to use power tools as well as a sewing machine to add gadgetry onto the pre-purchased apron that she used as her base.

From her first designs to the final product there were a few alterations that had to be made after she had her dad test out the invention on one of his trips to the chicken coop.

By the time she reached Dearborn, Cannan had plenty of opportunity to refine her pitch explaining the benefits of Chicken Hands. After entering the 4th grade Invention Convention at EES, Cannan was selected with seven other students to move up to the regional Invention Convention in Haddam. At the regional Invention Convention, she was selected to attend the Connecticut Invention Convention at UConn.

“I was thrilled to get the news of Ava making it to the next round for Invention Convention. We have extremely creative and innovative students at EES [Essex Elementary School],” said EES Principal Jennifer Tousignant.

At the State Invention Convention, Chicken Hands was one of the inventions to be chosen to head to nationals in Michigan. Cannan is the second EES student to have made it this far in the Invention Convention series, following Henry Brekenfield who attended the annual convention two years ago.

Of the 450 students who made it to the final national round, 120 of them were from Connecticut.

Ava and her mom Catherine traveled to Michigan for the last round of the Invention Convention with substantial support from their community, including financial support from the Essex Elementary School Foundation (EESF) and the Essex Elementary School PTO.

Tousignant alerted EESF and the PTO to Cannan’s progress and asked if they would be both willing and interested in helping to support their local inventor. Everyone agreed the cost should be covered; the PTO paid for the student registration fee while the EESF gifted the remainder of the costs involved with the trip.

The EESF has also announced that it will start a recurring $1,500 science and technology grant to be awarded to Essex Elementary School beginning this May.

“We are delighted to support such an exciting and innovative program at EES. Our foundation members and contributors enjoy seeing the outcome and use of the grants that we fund at EES,” said EESF President Bill Jacaruso.

“I am so very proud of Ava and thankful to the PTO and the EESF for agreeing to provide the financial support for this wonderful opportunity,” said Tousignant. “Ava’s hard work and perseverance throughout the invention convention exemplifies her success with critical and creative problem solving.”

Cannan said her fellow classmates were all proud and excited for her accomplishment.

“They all said, ‘Congratulations Ava’ and ‘I’m so proud of you.’ When I told my teacher [Ms. Lumbard], she got out of her chair and gave me the biggest hug,” Cannan said.

Both Cannan and her mom were overwhelmed with the support and kind words from their community.

“It was pretty inspiring,” Catherine Cannan said. “Being around everybody and seeing their ideas or the people who were there talking…they had a lot of amazing and inspiring things.”

Of the entire experience with Invention Convention, the most inspirational to Ava Cannan was that 59 percent of the students who went were girls.

“Girls change the world,” said Cannan. “That’s my motto.”

Learn more about EESF or make a tax-deductible donation at essexesf.org.