March - April 2012
Some exciting new things are happening at COBT connected to the Child Care Plus Sponsorship!
We have so many children with speech and language problems coming for therapy. Over the years we have had some visiting Speech Therapists in to see the children and offer advice to the moms and our staff members but we have never been able to offer consistent therapy. Now children who have been sponsored can have access to regular therapy. There are still no Speech Therapists in Malawi but we do have a Communication Disorders Technicians trained in Canada working in a private practice here in Lilongwe and we have contracted his services one morning a week. So far 20 of our sponsored children have speech and language problems and are eligible to have therapy. Initially he is seeing the children one at a time but will soon begin to divide them into 5 groups: oral motor (for kids with drooling and swallowing problems), articulation (for kids who talk but are hard to understand), encouraging communication one and 2 (for kids who are behind in their talking) and augmentative communication (for kids who need an alternative to talking).
We have also been able to start Sign language lessons thanks to the CCP sponsorships. 6 of our sponsored children are hearing impaired and we have an additional 8 more that are awaiting sponsors. We were fortunate to find Anne, a teacher for the Hearing Impaired who has been certified in the brand new Malawi Sign Language. She is coming to see the children once a week during the school term and three times a week during the school holidays to teach the children and their families how to talk using the new sign language. This is really important since most of our children attend schools for the deaf which do not teach sign language to their students!
We still have many more children available for sponsorship. If you are interested in sponsoring a child please go to www.erdo.ca and follow the link to Child Care Plus. Susan, highlighted in our last newsletter is one of the children receiving therapy on the sponsorship programme.
Our newest outreach in Lumbadzi continues to thrive with what must be a record 20 clients attending the other day with 8 of them new to us!!!! It is very satisfying to be able to reach out to these families. They are so happy to have us come to their area and offer them the chance to help their children get the therapy they need.
These families still have to come to our main site for certain aspects of the programme especially to access specialized services such as the nutrition programme, speech therapy and to get specialized equipment. Here is a group of moms from the Mchesi Outreach Clinic on their way home with equipment, Chiphonde and maize soya porridge, carried the Malawian way! Don’t forget they each have a baby on their backs! We give them money to take the minibus home but they still must walk a ways to catch the bus!
Last weekend we went into the rural village of Mgwangwa to meet with the chiefs and some of the clients from this area. We had asked one of the moms to organize the meeting and to find out from the chief whether there was a place where we could come and offer the clients therapy. She came back the very next session with news that the chiefs were very supportive and had located a room for us at the Primary School which we could use for our sessions. She had also arranged a meeting for us with the chiefs to see the room that weekend. Chifundo, one of our rehabilitation technicians went to the meeting. He was amazed by how far away from our centre it was to this Primary School and how hard it was to get there! All of the other outreach clinics we go to are on major roads that are easily accessible by public transportation. To get to the Primary School in Mgwangwa he had to take a minibus to Nsungwe market and then hire a bicycle taxi which took him one and a half hours just to get to the school! This just highlights how hard it is for many of our clients to come to us for therapy and how dedicated so many of the moms are. It also confirms the need to train our staff to ride our motorcycle, something we have wanted to do for ages but is very expensive.
We continue to struggle with finding the funding to sustain our many programmes especially for paying salaries for our professional staff and for current working expenses. If you would like to help please contact us . We would love to hear from you!
2012 has been a very challenging year so far for Malawi with great economic hardship for everyone. Most of our expenses have doubled over what it cost last year for the same items. At the same time our numbers have also increased!