One of the things we have learned here in Inner
Mongolia is that there is a big need for therapists who know how
to work with children with cerebral palsy (CP). CP is just as prevalent here as
in other parts of the world, but the knowledge of how to care for children with
this need is limited. Because of this, many of these children are abandoned and
are found in orphanages, where the staff do what they can, but really don’t
know how to best help. One of our
visions at New Day North is to help these staff help these children. To this
end, we have brought up several therapists over the past year to help the
orphanage staff learn better how to care for these special children. We have
already written a couple of blog posts about this in the past
You have also seen some of the pictures of our first New Day
North room in one of the orphanages where we have begun working with some of
the younger children who have CP. It has been great to see how well the
children are doing and to see how encouraged the staff have been to see some of
the potential for their children with this special need.
Another exciting
opportunity we have coming up is to set up a room in the same orphanage with
some of their older children who have CP. We hope to be able to both give these
children better care and to provide a model of what can be done for children
who have these multiple needs. More to come on this in the next couple of weeks.
Finally, as we have been both seeking to help the orphanages
care for these children and seeing more and more of them abandoned, we happened
upon a special center for special needs children here in the city of Hohhot
which, with the help of governmental subsidies, provides therapy for families
with children who have cerebral palsy and have NOT abandoned them. As we met
with this center, we realized what heroes these parents were and what incredibly
important work these therapists were doing to help these families keep their
children. We saw how well it fit our vision to help these therapists give these
children the best care they could get to encourage the parents and enable these
children to reach their potential and to not give up hope and drop their
children off at orphanages. To that end,
we partnered with a local American therapist who brought in a team of
therapists she had trained in Mongolia
to help provide specialized training at this center for their therapists. After
several days of sharing ideas together, they gifted us with some therapy
equipment to take back to the orphanage to use in our New Day North room to
help the children there.
Thank you, Margie, Duda and Daugie
for your contribution of skills and materials to the children of China .
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| Therapy equipment donations |
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| Kristiana in her new "seat" |
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This post was written by Wendy, NDN's special education teacher
This post was written by Wendy, NDN's special education teacher
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