100 Dominican special needs kids more independent

Delfina Polanco and her son Aneudy

Aneudy enrolled into our community inclusion program in 1994 because of a moderate general developmental delay. His mother Delfina became one of the first five Community Rehabilitation Workers of our community home visiting program the same year. She had finished only 6 years of primary school. After working with her son she was able to enroll him in the local school and at a certain point she decided to go back to school herself in order to be able to help Aneudy with his homework. Both of them ended up graduating from high school in 2005!

Since then Aneudy has been working many different jobs. Most likely his immaturity and the negative influence of his friends in his community did not help him much. But things changed for the better when he landed his present job as a night guard. His mother is happy that he has finally come to a healthy routine in his life and he and his girlfriend are expecting their first children, twins!  Delfina has been working as a supervisor in our program for more than 12 years now and supervised the work with hundreds of families in and around her community.

Malfi 

Community Rehabilitation worker Rosa Julia came to the supervision meeting last Friday and told us very enthusiastically that one of the 8 children with disabilities she visits weekly, had made a significance advance in his development!

Malfi is the 3 year old son of 28 year old Mayelin, who herself used to receive visits from the our home visiting program between 1992 and 1997, because of a moderate general delay in her development.

This might have been the reason why she never took her 3 year old son to any medical or rehabilitation department to get a diagnosis, until Rosa Julia got involved.

Malfi enrolled in our home visiting program only 3 months ago with a mild form of Cerebral Palsy. He was sort of crawling and now he has been taking his first steps!! This was celebrated by his mother and the rest of the family and even the neighbors were amazed with his progress in such a little time! Great work  by both Rosa and Mayelin in stimulating Malfi's general development!

Your donations continue to support 100 mothers like Delfina y Mayelin by offering them orientation, special techniques and counseling for the optimal development of their children!

Thanks to your support, children like Aneudy, Mayelin and Malfi are and will be included in the Dominican society as persons with equal rights  And alongside 14 other organizations for or of persons with disabilities, we are working towards them having equal chances also!!

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Yadiel is a 6 year old hyperactive boy with speech development problems. He lives with his grandmother, uncles and aunts in a very poor home, where they are all day laborers. The grandmother collects bottles and sells them and an aunt who lives next door sometimes brings them something to eat. In addition, the grandmother had the habit of saying many bad words to the child, of which he repeated one, actually the only word he spoke.

After the Community Rehabilitation Worker Magdalena had been visiting Yadiel and his family for about 12 months he can communicate using words and sentences and attend school. Magdalena also achieved that the grandmother stopped saying bad words. Now even the neighbors talk about the change in the boy. They are still working to improve his behavior which is challenging in his living environment and causing problem in school.

Anabel was born with a heart defect and operated when she was only 2 years old.  She was visited a few years by a Community Rehabilitation worker after coming into the program when she was 11 years old.  She graduated from the home visiting program when she was 14 and enrolled in one of the 4 adolescent groups.  Her mother expressed today her satisfaction with the program and that Anabel has become very useful in the home, she cooks and cleans and has learned a lot of handicrafts.  The social environment of the group has changed her from a shy girl into a more socially engaged young women. 

Our Foundation works with 100 children and adolescents as Yadiel and Anabel.  Thank you for your donation and please continue to support our foundation to help children and adolescents to become happy useful persons in the Dominican Society.