Sayuri is a nine year old girl who suffers from cerebral palsy. She lives with her parents, Rose and Clement, and her 13 year old half-brother. Sayuri’s development was always slow for her age; she learned to walk at three years old and couldn’t hold her head up without assistance until the age of two. Since the age of three she has been receiving physical therapy treatment and has learned to walk, although with some difficulty. Her physical therapy is continuing with a professional in the Arco Iris school, where she also studies. Sayuri and her family live in a one-room accommodation, where they all sleep, eat and cook. Her father is cook, but can’t find work in his profession and works in agriculture and construction. Rosa, her mother, is a housewife and occasionally works in a local hotel. Due to her family’s meager income, Sayuri requires economic support to cover the costs of daily transportation to Urubamba, allowing her to continue her education at Arco Iris.

Alex is a 16 year old boy who lives in Phiry, Peru. He has severe cerebral Palsy and is completely dependent on his mother for everything. He can´t walk. He can´t talk. He has very little control over his arms and legs. Yet he can probably smile better than any of us! He remained in a bed for pretty much his whole life up until he was 14 years old when MySmallHelp gave him his new wheelchair allowing him to leave the four walls of his bedroom. He was given the gift of life again.

MySmallHelp has also fundraised to provide Alex with a new mattress to improve his posture and provides his mother with volunteers to provide regular support to care for his personal care needs. We have also petitioned with the local community to get Alex a place in the local special needs school. The MySmallHelp bus collects Alex and brings him to school twice a week. This gives Alex the opportunity to be around other children with disabilities and to begin to experience a sense of inclusion into society.

Lourdes Juno Mamani is an 18 year old girl who lives in a little village a couple of hours from Cuzco in the Sacred Valley in Peru. It’s a beautiful place to live; rural, natural, tranquil but very very difficult for a young lady in a wheelchair. For the first 18 years of Lourdes’ life she was confined to the small village of Rumira and primarily to her family home. Her parents are both alcoholics, her father has since left the family, she has a sister and three half-brothers and sisters. Lourdes has only a few wishes…. that she can have an education, that she can leave Rumira and that she can earn herself some money. Thanks to a kind donation from Spain last year Lourdes does now have a wheelchair and with the help of My Small Help gets out and about at least twice a week into towns close by that she’d never known in the earlier years of her life. She loves looking her best, playing with make-up, painting her nails and most of all reading. Lourdes is always questioning the My Small Help volunteers about new English words when we see her. Lourdes wants to learn as quickly and as efficiently as possible but the local teachers believe it best that she is taught at home by visiting teachers. The problem is cost, in order for Lourdes to have enough weekly lessons to make progress it costs a lot of money and many teachers are not keen to visit her more than three times a week for a few hours. It’s simply not enough. A fantastic jewellery designer and maker in Cuzco sees Lourdes regularly and has already taught her to work with silver and natural products too. She enjoys making the jewellery and recognises that she can make a living from it, selling at markets, fairs etc. She is currently working with hemp to make organic products for a local Sacred Valley bio-fair. We can help Lourdes with sponsoring her education and home lessons, a laptop which will aid her jewellery design as well as schooling and ideally helping setting up her business so that’s she able to move to more accessible Cuzco sometime in the near future.

Ricardo is eight years old and has congenital paralysis of his left eye and extra ocular muscular palsy. He lives with his family, including three siblings in a small community called Cachicatta. He currently needs corrective surgery to lift his lid. If he doesn’t receive surgery, he will eventually succumb to blindness in his left eye and thus never be able to use it again. He is an active boy who enjoys playing with other kids and especially enjoys partaking in chess matches. His family has been saving up for the surgery, but it will drain them of expenses that otherwise would go to pay for food and shelter for their entire family

Roxana is an eleven-year old girl living in a small community called Cachicatta. Roxana lives with her six siblings and parents, who work in the fields during the day. Roxana has a form of epilepsy that causes her to have seizures three to four times a day. She also suffers from developmental delay that may be a form of autism spectrum disorder and is worsened by ongoing seizures. She has never been to school because of her condition and spends most days in the yard in front of her house, playing by herself. Roxana has failed the antiepileptic medications available locally and needs more specialized attention in Cuzco which will include electroencephalogram testing and brain imaging to determine the type and extent of her condition so that she can be given the appropriate medication, which her family cannot afford. She is currently being visited by a volunteer who is helping with her social and mental development, with hopes that in the future she can enroll in school and interact with her peers.

Anita is a ten year old girl from Cusco who goes to school, lives with her sisters and parents, and wants to enjoy life to the full. Anita was born with cerebral disabilities and hip problems too. In her first few years of life, Anita had many operations. Anita’s father is self-employed and her mother stays at home to look after Anita full time. Anita goes to school and enjoys it but is starting to get behind in class and is finding it more and more difficult to keep up with the pace of education. Additionally due to her hip problems Anita also has to wear nappies all of the time. This is a large cost for the family to carry every day. We know we can help Anita’s quality of life with funds for nappies, extra-lessons to keep her schooling standard on par with the rest of her class, a tape recorder and a laptop too. The long-term goal too would be to aid her parents to create a business that lets her mother stay at home and work alongside caring for Anita. Anita’s mother is a super baker and her father is talented and able to help build an oven and stove for the family. This could then be used on a daily basis by the mother to bake goods and pastry products to sell in Cuzco and therefore create a sustainable income for the family.

Natividad Holgado: Natividad is sixty four years old and has complete lower-limb paralysis, due to a spinal cord infection, and severe hearing loss, as a result of the abuse of her brother. After the damage to her hearing, her brother has since left the house and she now resides with her niece. Natividad is quite independent and crawls around her room, cooking and doing household chores by herself. She is being visited by volunteers who provide both company and assistance with tidying up. For now, the strain of her daily mobility could be relieved with the use of a scooter. Additionally, she suffers from a pain from a recent fall as well as gird and needs daily medication, which she cannot afford.

Lurdes is a three year old girl from the town of Yanahaura. Lurdes was born with Down Syndrome, which causes speech and motor learning impairments. Her father left her mother when Lurdes was born because the situation overwhelmed him. Her mother works tirelessly at the local clinic, dividing her hours between work and caring for Lurdes. Lurdes entertains patients at the clinic while her mom is working with her precious smiles and silly antics. Lurdes would benefit from regular visits from a speech therapist and occupational therapist to learn skills during a time in her life where retention of such skills are greatest.

Andrés is a 21 year old young man who was born with cerebral palsy. He has lived almost his entire life in the Clínica San Juan de Dios in Cusco, Peru. He was abandoned by his family, who were from one of the high altitude communities above Calca. He has received a series of operations, not all of them successful, with the goal of improving his mobility of his hands, which at first glance seem completely non-functional. Andrés, with strength and a determination to do more each day, has dispelled this idea, and shown us what he, and his hands, are capable of. Andrés is a very intelligent young man, but was never able to attend high school regularly. He is extremely capable, and very excited to work and “become someone useful”. MySmallHelp is looking for a sponsor to be able to provide an education to Andres. Andrés possesses an amazing personality, evident from the first time you meet him. He lives alone and in difficult conditions, in a rented room near the clinic. This room is in no way equipped to accommodate someone with a disability; he can’t enter or leave the room alone, the bathroom is far removed, and it is impossible for him to get there in his wheelchair. In short, Andrés needs a better place to live. He works making beautiful woven bracelets, which he sells incredibly cheaply in the street, making such a small income that its miraculous he can survive. Living in such precarious circumstances shows that Andres is a fighter, and that he would truly benefit from our help.

Leonel is a six year old boy, happy, active and lively. He lives in a small home with his mother and two sisters. His father left the family and doesn’t visit or support them in any way. The family’s only source of income are the eggs that Leonel’s mother sells in the plaza of Ollantaytambo, which hardly cover health, education, clothing and food for her three children. Leonel has never learned to speak and has a malformation on his right foot. He communicates only with gestures. Medical tests have proven him to be deaf in both ears. He had never been enrolled in school, but last year begun attending the Arco Iris school, located 25 minutes from his home in the town of Urubamba. In December 2011 a Canadian volunter raised money to buy Leonel hearing aids.

He will just be using one to begin with to get used to it and it will only to be used at school at first. The hearing aids are just a small step towards the eventual goal of him being able to communicate like any other child his age, but with his intelligence and energy, we're all sure he can carry the project the rest of the way.

However, in March 2012 the Peruvian government intends for all children with a variety of special needs to be integrated into the regular school system which, without any linguistic skills, Leonel is going to find it very difficult. Therefore he still very much needs our support to access the MSH bus service to continue to travel to the Arco Iris special school in Urubamba.