Stimulation Therapy for 250 People w/ID in Chile

Hi everyone,

We sincerely hope all is well.

Due to the unrest as of October last year and this year with Covid-19 in Chile, we have had to put many things on hold.  Unfortunately, Chile has been one of the countries with the most amount of Covid-19 cases per capita in the world and we have been in cuarantine for 4 months.  However, with our non profit we have adapted to these changes in so many ways with one of them having all of our educational programs online.  With two professors, an occupational therapist, director and education director we continue to educate 25 people with special needs.  We also are running recreative programs for thirteen people with special needs analyzing books and movies and discussing life and relationships etc. helping to develop social skills.  Also, during this time our director started a great program dedicated to parents for people with special needs where they provide support and helpful information.  As of last week, we are in the process of coordinating our snowboard championship ¨Vive sin Límites¨via online with the Special Olympics Chile where we strive to connect with all of our former athletes and participants all over Chile to compete via balance board and with the support of professional athletes.  Once we establish the details, we will provide you with all the information.

We truly hope this ends soon so, we can continue with our goal of opening our stimulation therapy center.  We can not thank you all enough for all of the tremendous support you have provide us.

Please be safe and stay strong.  We are all in this together.

Sending all of you lots of love.

Best of Life,

The Ride de Vuelta Foundation

Hi everyone,

Hope all is well with your family and loved ones during these difficult times.

We are writing you all to keep you informed with our progress for Stimulation Therapy Center here in Chile.

In the first weeks of January we launched an Intensive Therapy Program. Our director of our non-profit was able to rent office space for two weeks free of charge.

The target was to increase cognitive, educational, physical and social skills for people with special educational needs, through personalized supports, according to evaluations and requirements from the family and each person from our multidisciplinary team.

We had five types of therapists: • Occupational  •Special Education • Phonoaudiology • Game / Psychomotor • Physical conditioning

The Program  lasted 14 days, 6 hours a day - 6 kids - from 2,5 to 14 years old -

Each one had their own objective and it was an excellent opportunity to see how each person achieved them.

Also, in January we created spaces for people with special educational needs where they implemented what they learned during the year 2019. One of them who had down syndrome named Manuel  was put in charge of social networks and video creation.  Another person Teresita, who has special needs was the assistant for one of our therapists and was the coordinator of pedagogical materials. All of this was designed to foster their transition to adulthood by teaching them skills that would allow them to increase their level of development.

Finally, collective game activities were carried out so that people with special educational needs with a cognitive level could learn to play card games collectively among others to promote their socialization and transfer those learning to their context.
Meeting spaces were generated where 19 young people with special needs attended to schedule a trip carried out under the name Summer Camp by our nonprofit where they learned how to use their personal documents, prepare a list of clothes and toiletries and get to know each other as a group, identifying their tastes, interests and expectations of the trip.

Now, we are still waiting for a defined location where we can install our stimulation therapy center.  Things are once again have come to a hault due to much unrest that restarted in March and with the coronavirus.

We can´t thank you all enough for your support and we will keep you updated on our progress.

Lots of love.

Kind regards, 

The Ride de Vuelta Foundation

Hi everyone,

We sincerely hope all is well.

Unfortunately, due to the protests and unrest here in Chile, we have not been able to move forward with many of the initial steps to create the first stimulation therapy center for people with intellectual and motor disabilities.

We hope that this will end soon so, we can begin to move forward and accomplish what we set out to do in a timely manner.

Again, we can´t thank you all enough for your support and we will keep you all informed with the progress we make.

Lots of love to you all.

Kind regards,

The Ride de Vuelta Foundation  

At this stage we still have not received your donations however, Global Giving is telling us that it will arrive within the next week.

We have been fiercely motivated and have made big steps forward for example,  have had many meetings with institutions throughout Chile that work to improve learning for people with intellectual and physical disabilities, one of them is Tobii Dynavox.  Tobii Dynavox provides communication apps, speech generation devices, eye trackers and eye-gaze enabled devices for individuals with disabilities and special needs who require AAC which we will be implementing into our educational program next month for 10 people with autism, down syndrome and cerebral palsy that need this instrument to communicate. 

We have attended a few Brain Gym seminars by Carol Ann Erickson in Hospital Clinico in Santiago that focused on Bloomberg Rhythmic Movements, a neuro-developmental kinesiology program matures the brain and integrates primitive reflees using specific innate movement patterns and gentle isometric integration techniques. This training gives us guidance for our methodology during the intervention processes to people with intellectual and physical disabilities for our stimulation therapy center.

We have attended an early stimulation training program for people with down syndrome with the Foundation Down Up which explains how to stimulate play and cognition in babies.  

We are registering the first 25 people that will benefit from these projects. 

We are in the process of creating new ideas and fundraising with our volunteers to help raise funds and reach the goal of 50,000 USD.

Thanks to everyone for your support.

We look forward to sharing more of our progress every month.

Best of life 

• Afiche_Programa_BRMT_2019.pdf (PDF)