Zambia - Ndola Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR)

Ndola CBR Programme has Centres for people with disabilities in and around Ndola. The CBR workers do therapy activities for children and also oversee and encourage adults with intellectual disabilities in vocational work. Some of the Volunteers joined with the Wukwashi wa Nzambi volunteers for 2 days at Ben Doree.

No ladder - no worries!

This week Joy, Peter and Jean have been in Ndola in the De Jong Building in the Centre of the town. Andrew had been busy with John and Richard preparing the workshop space. This involved building another large work table and putting up shelving. Andrew left some of the tools which have been logged and handed over for the maintenance work.

The aim was to help set up the workshop. This involved the physical aspects and importantly practice with real children. 4 were chosen and came to be measured for a piece of equipment. There are different types of cerebral palsy and they were well chosen to help everyone make different variations of equipment according to the needs and sizes of the children.

Photos of WORK ..doing it and watching others

A happy Kondwani is his standing frame. Lots of approval from Naomie, the physiotherapist.

Angela trying out her seat and footstool. She will use this to join the family at the diningroom table. We are hoping/expecting that thsi will help her strengthen her neck muscles too.



It makes a big difference for Community rehabilitation workers to have input from physiotherapists. Thanks to the charity work done by the Company Clinic in Kitwe, Naomie, their physiotherapist came to Ben Doree and gave a talk on cerebral palsy. She also saw 2 of the children she knows well from the Mother's group in Kitwe, in their new pieces of equipment.



After checking the equipment with the child and physiotherapist, it is time to paint!

Mildred is in the background painting a stool with Joy painting the butterfly chair

The painted standing frame

The weekend gave an opportunity to see the work done on the new Medical clinic for Misaka

Peter tried making one of the bricks!

The new seals are working!

Manfred working the foot-pump

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Ben Doree Workshop and more

Diz by the container in the photo, received wonderful gifts of clothes and much more from people in the UK and Australia. The container is slowly emptying. People come to buy the clothes and then have a little business selling them on - a much needed means of earning some cash in a country where unemployment is over 8O% in areas.

Diz and Andrew having a chat

Ben Doree Farm belongs to Diz Bostock. She really felt led to buy it and has been helping children who are HIV or have lost their parents to the disease and many others arrive for help - ususally in desparate straights. She met up with John and Becky who were working with Wukwashi wa Nzambi and Joyce and Henry went to live in a small house on the farm. Now the link with disabled children and families is growing. The workshop is built and Diz has been helping all of us allowing us to sleep in her house finding things for us and letting us use one of hte sewing machines she was given.

The first week in BenDoree consisted of tidying and making workstations - mainly Andrew with Jean painting and Peter was busy with the 'Go for' trips to town, the clinic (Joyce and Henry's baby Nancy had an ear infection but she is fine now). The matresses for the Volunteers

We were joined on Thursday by a number of the Wukwashi volunteers and started to make boards

Meet Emmanuel, Ellison, Jean, Patrick and Henry (Wukwashi wa Nzambi leader with Joyce)

We are pasting boards using the cardboard that we had opened up and organised into layers.

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Over the weekend we went to visit two of the Wukwashi Volunteers who are helping with the Chingola groups of children with disabilities. Marina is one of the first volunteers to find children with disabilities needing help.

Jean Chrispiene Andrew and Marina in the office at Chrispien's house.

Chrispiene is another social entreprise person. He started teaching his own children after school and was soon joined by 30 curious children. He has built classrooms on his house and has now found some teachers and runs a pre-school as well as working.

The reality of life for many people - no running water.
We went home with Marina and saw where she lives.

Marina showing how she has to collect water from a hole dug beside the stream - this helps a bit with some filtering.

This is Marina's first job of the day every morning.

Despite living with lots of difficulties (no electricity, tiny house with no security of tenure, caring for her sister's daughter and her daughter as well as a nephew), Marina works in a school (an hour's walk away) and still manages to help with the weekly sessions for the children with disabilities and their families. God bless Marina.

Another UK Volunteer comes to help!

Joy arrived last Sunday complete with box that customs had opened - then decided that they liked her bird chair!

Kondwani

Kondwani liked it too! He is 4 and has cerebral palsy.

It was Kondwani's and Peter's birthdays on the 16th - Kondwani received a present of a soft toy that Andrew's children had sent. Unwrapping going on in photo!
The lunchtime birthday celebration and cake!

Esther, Kondwani's Mum is one of the active Wukwashi Volunteers. She is a primary school teacher and has been helping run sessions with the children with disabilities


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We have returned to Ndola after a great 2 weeks out near Garneton, Kitwe on Ben Doree Farm

THERE ARE MORE PHOTOS COMING

run out of time now - hopefully more next week

Ben Doree preparation and workshop beginnnings

Cardboard galore! Geoff and team collected enough for the 3-ton truck. Geoff, Richard (from Geoff's firm - he loaded and covered the truck) and Andrew are in the photo.

We discovered that half the workshop space was full of STUFF with another workshop space full of items equipment that has been donated. We worked hard on tidying both places in order to have one clear workshop. It was really worth the work. A wonderfully clear room emerged and Peter went off in the vehicle with some donations of adult chairs to Kitwe Hospital. Sadly the nurses, physiotherapists and lots of other staff (even docotrs) are on strike all over the country. However he was received by a physio' who was delighted with the chairs and the crutches and took him to the appropriate person in charge to officiate

On Tuesday Peter and Jean went to Kitwe to visit Naomie, the physiotherapist who has been very active in a mother's group with many children with cerebral palsy.

We saw Agnes and her mother who were on the camp. We heard how everyone had loved the camp. Two of the children and their mothers will come for measuring on Monday for the first made-tomeasure items for in Ben Doree.

As soon as there was space Andrew got to work concocting workbenches from a wooden bunkbed with the happy bonus of using some of the stuff that had not found a home. Henry is in the background removing Ken's rope to use to fetch the press.

Eddie, who lives with Diz, his 'Grannie', and Patrick (Joyce and Henry's nephew who also lives on Ben Dore farm) visiting to inspect the workshop. Eddie loves his PETS hand-propelled machine and uses it to get to school every day. Diz says he is top of the class.

Thursday and some of the Wukwashi Volunteers arrived to learn APT and help set up the workshop. Here Patrick(a new Volunteer) Thompson(also new), Esther who has made items before are opening up boxes with Andrew. Peter is out fetching the press made by a local carpenter. Please not the start of batons on the wall for shelves!

The New Press is made in Ndola

Martin Mwansa and other CBR workers from Ndola got together and made boards for the new frame/press made by the carpenters.

The boards are getting hard and will be made into chairs and standing frames in a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow we start at Kitwe with Wukwashi wa Nzambi

Then a workshop with both groups at the end of next week.

Fist day - Ndola

Today we split up. Peter to Geoff to get the vehicle we are borrowing sorted. Geoff and Nell had found an amazing amount of cardboard - it filled the back of a 3 ton truck!

Margaret from Ndola Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) came to the Guest House and took Andrew and I to see their office, meet people and also visit the new workshop place and then two CBR programmes.

A 5-year old girl with cerebral palsy at Chifubu CBR for therapy and exercises

At Chipukulusu Community Based Rehabilitation they have vocational workshops for young people with learning disabilities.

This is the woodwork workshop.

Off to a great start in Zambia

It was a good flight even though sleep is difficult due to stopping in Rome, Addis and Lilongwe.

Peter's friends were waiting and manged to get us plus all the STUFF into their vehicle. They drove us all the way back to Ndola over 200 miles and 99 sleeping policeman!

This photo is especially for Andrew's little girl who loves planes.

Daddy in front of the plane that flew him for Addis to Lusaka!

He sends love to all the family

as do the rest of us!

Off to Zambia

Peter Fitzmaurice (Assistant), Andrew Walters (Carpenter) and Jean Westmacott (Cerebral Palsy Africa Equipment trainer) are leaving today.

This is thanks to Vodafone Foundation who gave Jean a World of Difference award to work for Cerebral Palsy Africa for a year. Her work involves training in Africa and training more people here to be able to help others make Assistive Cardboard Equipment for children with cerebral palsy. See http://www.vodafone.com/world_of_difference/uk_winners/jean.html

Peter and Jean - standing board under construction

Joy, our volunteer artist who has done loads of Appropriate Paper-based Technology (APT), will be joining us on the 13th June.

A bird-chair is emerging

We have been preparing to help two organizations in the Copperbelt.

1. Wukwashi wa Nzambi - doing community-based rehabilitation for children living with disability - around Kitwe and in Chingola
2. Catholic Diocese of Ndola CBR - doing community-based rehabilitation for children and adults living with disability - in and around Ndola

As part of their work to help people with disabilities they are going to be making assistive cardboard equipment. Both organisations have organised workshop places and we will be helping with training in designs and hands-on work to get it all going.

They will have to measure children, work with the physiotherapists on the positioning and then construct the bench, chair or standing frames. So to help we have made up some patterns and Kennett has design special measuring boards to simply the cutting of standing boards. He has also constructed special boxes for the kit and done endless APT sticking such as making the wedge below.

Meanwhile Andrew did a sponsored walk to Brighton.

Thank you to everyone who helped with sponsorship and thanks to Gail his 'Co-ordinating' wife.

Setting off

Thank you for all support from work, friends, family

and the Church of the Good Shepherd, Four Marks.

Continuation

There is good news from Ghana. A new workshop has opened with 2 of the particpants working hard in Sunyani Regional Hospital

Congratulations!

See the wonderful insert Veronica has made for her daughter and the chair Dorinda has made for her son

People are continuing to make things to help children with disabilities

Ghana Training

After all the preparations is was so wonderful to arrive at the venue and find people waiting. A Physiotherapy Assistant and a Carpenter had come on a bus through the night from Sunyani. They had been waiting since around 5 am and wonderfully managed to keep going all day. There were 14 people for the entire course and one who could only come for the second week.

The star of the show was the little son of one of the participants. He used tha paper standing frame every day and we could see him improving - His smile was so engaging that we all spent time watching him.







Margriet the VSO physiotherapist who had been busy preparing, helped run the course. She will now be able to run one on her own!

The Happy Faces chair

A Physiotherapy Bench being made

Bench painted with earth and charcoal paint

The goal is that after the course the participants will be able to use the techniques of Appropriate Paper-based Technology to help children with positioning as directed by the physiotherapists and make chairs or standing boards according the size of the child.