Sri Lanka is home to 160,000
amputees. In the north, where civil
war raged for almost 30 years, 75% of amputees are victims of landmines or are
war wounded. Landmines have indiscriminately torn the limbs off of soldiers and
children alike. Although the government is now trying to clear the landmines,
it is a slow and tedious process. An estimated 90% of the amputees in this
region lack proper prosthetic limbs. Deprived of their mobility, many are
unable to work or provide for themselves and their families and are forced to
beg in the streets, and children are unable to go to school.
This walk I'm doing is in aid of the Jaffna Jaipur Centre for Disability Rehabilitation, who provide high quality, lightweight and low-cost prostheses and orthotic
devices to physically disabled people living in the Jaffna Peninsula (northern
Sri Lanka) as well as physiotherapy and follow-up rehabilitation. The JJCDR also provides mobility devices, micro-credit
loans to get adults back to work and student educational grants to differently-abled children. Its mission is
to reach out to people with limb-loss and physical disabilities to empower them
through a total rehabilitation program to restore not only their mobility, but
also their dignity.
The
cost of a below-knee prosthesis is only $180. A wheelchair, $106. A monthly education grant
to a disabled child is $3.80. It just takes a ridiculously small
amount of money a lot to transform a life from one of dependence and poverty to
that of independence and economic productivity. So I'm asking everyone... click on that DONATE link and help me raise funds for 100 prostheses.
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