Monday, November 14, 2011

A Conductive World- Can we help?

There are places in the world that are difficult to live in period, even if you don't have a child with disability. It must be so much harder, much more that I can ever imagine if you are in some of those countries and you do. I get e-mails from four corners of the globe practically every day, most asking for the same thing, regardless if it's from Africa, South America, Europe, Asia or the US. Hope. Some kind of cure, some kind of treatment, no matter what it's called, no matter how it works, that has an ounce, a shred of possibility that it may be somehow helpful to their child. Parents are the same everywhere you go. Everybody wants their Cerebral Palsy sons and daughters to get better, to get the best possible care. Their circumstances are of course different, by pure chance it feels some were born in more fortunate parts of the world, having access to better resources. It's heartbreaking for me to open my mailbox every day. Because what can I tell a mother in Ghana or Kenya, India, Iran, Afghanistan, all those places that include very detail description of their situation, of difficult lives of struggle with neglect and poverty? That your lives are hard enough and that I admire you? We operate a small school in the United States, we barely have enough to meet our own needs. We can't fly everyone to America, but we have never turned any child yet, regardless of who they were and what their financial situation was. We will work something out with parents who are able to get to our school, but we don't provide other forms of support. Some e-mails ask for financial backing or help purchasing equipment abroad, we don't do that.

Many e-mails ask for DVDs. While we don't offer any, I always thought that Kata's approach,  how personable she is would translate well to video. She has years of experience of training green volunteers to do exactly what needs to be done to assist her in rehabilitation sessions. Some say, that doing a small bit isn't good enough. I say, when reality kicks in, something has to be better than nothing because we have no other options. For about two years I've thinking about setting up video courses for parents that can't get to us, so that oue Conductor can work with parents throughout the day and easily follow up and monitor progress. Some who can afford it would pay something, most I assume would get it for free. Having this put together however costs money. We have a lot of ideas, but too few resources. If you know of anybody who can support us, donate or give it some media exposure, let us know, we need help.

The other thing I always wanted to do is to be able to issue visas to students in the program. That is the benefit of running a school rather than a therapy center. Educational facilities can get accredited by immigration, a process that is both costly and time consuming. It would be far more difficult to get someone to America if we were running a clinic, when the method that you use would basically have to not be readily available elsewhere. Pretty hard to claim given that the method is Hungarian. The downside is, while you can issue F1 visas when accredited, there is nothing you can offer the parent, who given the child's age should be there. They would be forced to enter on a tourist visa, with all the restrictions or we would have to set up an expensive to launch board school model, which would again require funding of some kind through donors or corporate sponsorships or grants. I get a lot of e-mails from Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the Philippines asking  to send a child away for school.I'm sure there are CE centers closer to some of these places but they must be either too expensive or not visible, otherwise parents would not be googling for a school half way across the world.

  I know I can't solve the global problem of Cerebral Palsy, but I sure would like to try helping some children. I was born with the condition myself and I was fortunate to have the right circumstance, loving parents who had the proper methods available to them. There's no reason I should be special in any way. That's why I  decided to join the foundation to help others, pay it forward and be passionate about something. But we need help and exposure. We need to get started to get started  If you think you can assist us in any way, let  us know: rstrzal@jordanklausner.org

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