An Exciting Project
As some of you know, Tawingo Fund supports multiple organizations in Guatemala helping children with disabilities in remote, hard-to-access areas. These organizations are doing life-changing and life-saving work. But what about all of the municipalities without any services for children with disabilities? How could we also try to reach those children?
Knowing that Range of Motion Project (ROMP) has a growing Community Based Rehab program for amputations and prosthetics, we approached ROMP about the idea of creating a simple guide that would help people to identify disabilities and provide a list of referral organizations. ROMP not only agreed to take on the project, but did so with incredible, infectious enthusiasm that made this project what it is! They surveyed 30+ organizations across Guatemala to learn about their programs, collected medical information on the most common disabilities, employed a graphic designer and writer to create the content, and built countrywide relationships to ensure it got in the hands of the right people. In partnership with Dorothea H. Ross foundation, we were able to print 1,000 copies which have been distributed across the country!
The goal of the guide is to help community health workers, NGOs, public health centers and schools to identify disabilities, provide basic information on the most common disabilities, and provide information on the different referral organizations across the country. And it has done so much more already…
When looking at the map of the different organizations across the country, one can clearly see vast geographic areas where no support organizations exist for people with disabilities. This enables us as funders and implementers to hone in on how we can ensure that the people living with disabilities in these areas are not left behind.
By distributing the guide to remote areas where people are not aware of the resources that they can access, people who didn’t know that a prosthetic leg was possible and attainable are suddenly arriving at ROMP. In fact, ROMP has already (only 1 month into the guide being sent out) seen referrals from areas of Guatemala where they have never had patients. For these amputee patients who thought they would never walk again, the door to mobility and independence is opening.
Other funders and nonprofits are receiving the guide and recognizing that it can be shared and utilized in any geographic area. They will replicate it around the world and lives will be touched in places oceans away from Guatemala.
Jonathan Naber from ROMP and I will be presenting this project to a large group of donors this week, building visibility for the need for more disability funders and the huge impact that philanthropy can have on helping children with disabilities to get a fighting chance, an opportunity to go to school and the tools to make their dreams a reality.
