Progress for 100 Dominican kids with special needs

Hi, I am José Daniel, I am 6 and a half years old and I live with my parents and 1 older brother and sister.

I always feel happy and cheerful and  I also like to sing and I love buses of which I know a song in English!

I realize that God made me different from other children, because they told my mother I have something called Autism. 

I love my mummy because she has tried to enroll me in several schools, but after a while they don't accept me there anymore because I'm very restless, I don't pay attention, I run around a lot. I feel bad for not being accepted at school.

My mother sought help in many institutions, but they did not help her a lot until she met the Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano in October 2021.
Auntie Rosa started visiting me every Wednesday. She showed my mother how to play with me so I would learn new things like matching, finishing puzzles, dressing up as an adult, filling and arranging letters and many other things.  I am a little less restless now also, because I like the things auntie Rosa shows my mother how to play with me, every week she comes with something new!

I feel very happy with her help and my mother too.

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The mother of José Daniel is one of the mothers that are very satisfed with the positive changes the teaming up with our foundation has brought to her family and management of José Daniel.

Every week we get new requests from mothers for our help and the last three years the mayority of them are from families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

We would like to thank you for your continued support for our work with the families of and young people living with disabilities.  Bringing them hope for a better future. Most of them are happier, more social, more engaged and some of them even have been gainlfully employed!   We are still working on getting most of the children accepted in the local schools!

HENRY

Hi, I'm Henry and I'd like to tell my story. In November 2022 I turned 21 years old.

I was born in 2001 with a very large head and part of my lower spine had not closed well. This meant I had to get operated very rapidly to put in a shunt to drain fluid from my brain and close the gap in my spine to prevent infections. My parents were informed that I would never walk.

I have a beautiful family. My biological mother works hard and loves me. My grandmother Milagros is my other mother who does everything possible for me to achieve my dreams, like studying.

Since I was 1 year old, she enrolled me in the Foundation's program to receive early stimulation and physical therapy at home. My family lives besides the entrance to the public school and grandmother Milagros decided to enroll with me in school. Now we are in the 7th grade. We go slow as I have lost a lot of schooltime during my surgeries and recovery time.

We have also studied plumbing together at a technical institute. I dream of being a policeman, but it will be difficult.

I'm a superhero, because I survived 17 surgeries. I thank God for mummy Milagros for always giving me her time, joy and love and being my 911!

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We at the Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano are very happy with the progress Henry has been making, but we realize it could have been better if he had not had that many operations of which many were because his shunt got blocked.  It is great to see him being thankful for his caring family.

Thank you for your support to the foundation and thus to the families and their children with disabilities.

If you want to have your support count 50% more, please consider donating during the upcoming Little by Little campaign during which all donations up to USD50 will have a 50% match.

April 3 to7 are the dates to look out for and put in your agenda.

Thank you again for choosing our work out of the many available good causes!!

Jesler was born 11 weeks premature, as a low weight baby. He has brain damage because of lack of oxygen during birth.

His mother observed he had problems when he was 6 months old, before he was diagnosed with a mild form of Cerebral Palsy.

She had heard about the home visiting services of the Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano from a neighbor and asked for her son to be enrolled.

When entering the program, Jesler was 10 months old and presented with low muscle tone and primitive reflexes that should have been gone by then. He could not hold up his head or roll over and did very little of what other babies of his age were doing, even taking into account his prematurity.

During the first year that Jesler was receiving weekly home visits, he has learned to use his hands, play, sit up with some help, and learned to get into a position to start crawling. The second year he started to walk.

The family is very grateful to the program and the home visitor is also happy with the mother and grandparents that have cooperated with the activities she left for the family to carry out with Jesler on a daily basis.

The family moved away out of the reach of our program and we wish them the best, hoping Jesler will be able to enroll in a school at the same age other children do.

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We get new families approach us every week that are interested in our home visiting services.  The last years the mayority of their children present a form of the Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Happily we count with an experienced psychologist who has worked 9 years with children and adolescents with this disorder and she has been training all our workers in orienting the parents how to succesfully work with their children.  Some are making good progress.

Thank you for your continuous support of our work.  We would appreciate you making an "End of Year" donation to our work, so in 2023 we will be able to extend our services and bring hope for progress to more families towards a better future of their children.

Wishing you a Merry Chrismas and a Happy and Prosperous 2023

I am Jose Aaron and I am 24 years old this year and I live with my mother in the United States.

I was born with West Syndrome in Santiago in the Dominican Republic. This affected my motor and language skills very much. When I was almost 6 years old my mother enrolled us in the home visiting program of the Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano.

The first auntie that visited us was Idenia. During the first year she taught my mother how to teach me to drink holding a cup in one hand, how to swallow my food, brush my teeth myself, put on and take off my clothes, start handling my toys correctly, use simple signs to communicate, as I never learned how to speak well, neither how to walk. She taught my mother to do all the exercises that would keep my body supple for bathing and putting on my clothes.

The following years I had different aunties and my learning started to go a lot slower, but over the years I learned how to use my hands a lot better like turning pages in a book, taking screw tops off, draw, eat by myself, know the main colors, and a lot more.

My mother was so grateful that she herself started to work as an auntie, helping other mothers help their children progress as good as possible. Sadly I never was able to go to school, but I am still learning new things, like starting to understand English a bit now I live in the USA.

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Our Foundation continues to work with children like Jose Aaron and their families to help them to reach their potential, even if it only means a better quality of life.

Today is Giving Tuesday.

The platform has more than a million dollars available to divide between all the projects.  The more we will receive in donations from our donors, the more we will receive in matching grants.

Your donation, however small, will help us to get a bigger part of this enormous fund, last year we got almost a 30% match.

Thank you for considering making a donation today. 

I would like to present you the story of Sebastian today:

Hi, my name is Sebastian. I live with my mother and sometimes my grandmother also visits us for a few weeks.  I was 5 years old when my mother enrolled me in the home visiting program of the Fundación Cuidado Infantil Dominicano

I was very shy and couldn't keep my attention on anything for long. I mispronounced the few words I knew and was throwing tantrums. I didn't want to be with anyone else except my mother. I wasn't very independent either, I didn't bathe myself, didn't dress myself, not even simple clothes. I didn't know how to point to or name things, make pairs, use my hands to use scissors, draw, complete a simple puzzle, etc.

Everything changed when my mother heard about the work of the Foundation from another mother. She registered me and the teacher Nurys came to visit me every week. At first I didn't pay her much attention, but I soon realized that the things she let me do were actually fun. So I started looking forward to her visits.

In between visits, my mother continued to play with me almost every day repeating the things Nurys taught her to do with me, and so I learned to pay attention, socialize with other children and people, learn more words and pronounce them better. I throw no more tantrums!

Thanks to the help of Nurys and now Johanna, the new teacher, and the guidance my mother received, I now bathe and dress myself, I am more independent, I know the name of many colors, I even cut out round things, I can already complete puzzles with 12 pieces and I feel more at ease with others. I also learned to say thank you and please!

I am 8 years old now and I am glad my mother has enrolled me for this next school year at a school nearby!!

I'm really looking forward to that.

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This story illustrates beautifully the objective of our home visiting program: help parents understand how to stimulated their children and get them ready to be enrolled in a regular school. (or special education)

Sadly this will not always be the final result for all the children in the program, as some children are too much involved.  Still we keep an open mind and see if the family and the child can surprise us with strides of progress!!

Thank you for you support! We appreciate you chose our programs out of many other good causes.

Wishing you good health, success and happiness,