Your Donations, Hard at Work.

As you already know, we have finished at FFC and left Coimbatore, and are currently enjoying our stay here in Cochin. On the recommendation of IHI 2009 we are taking some time in between each NGO placement to recharge and reflect on our experiences at the last placement.

Since we’ve been frequently sharing some of the hands on stuff we did during our stay there, we also wanted to share with you what some of the monies you, our amazing and generous sponsors, donated will be going towards here at FFC.

This is something that we didn’t take lightly at all. We have a large donation of about $2,500 we have for FFC and we wanted to spend it all wisely. Much of our time here was spent getting to know the facility, and asking the staff, the people who know best, where our money would best be spent. We got an amazing response from the staff here of things that they need.

Luckily we were able to purchase a number of things requested right here in Indi and we spent one of our mornings navigating the city, with the help of FFC’s awesome driver, Mani, purchasing these things. We bought rexin and rubber mats for the floors and the cribs, respectively, in the baby rooms, a pressure cooker, and a food processor and blender for preparing baby food. We also had a digital camera donated to us in Canada that we were able to leave with the FFC school.

For the remainder of our donation we split it into a wish-list of sorts, indicating where we would like to see our donation money going. A lot of the money has been designated to basic supplies needed to keep FFC running from day-to-day. These include school and art supplies, diaper materials for the baby rooms and special care sections, cooking supplies, and some new toys for each of the sections.

We mentioned that a lot of our time was spent assisting and observing with physiotherapy rounds here at FFC and we have seen a major need for funding here. Mukil Singh, the head PT here, identified that he could really use a new set of parallel bars and a standing table for the physio department here. He kindly looked into it and got a quote of how much it would be to have these supplies made and decided it would be feasible for us to donate the full amount to get each of these made. We have included this equipment in our wish-list and sent it off to Sandra Simpson, the amazing founder of FFC, who will consider our list and make the final decision on where our donation will be allocated. We are hopeful that these needs we identified with the help of the staff at FFC, will be met using the money we are so fortunate to be able to donate.

We thank you again for your generosity that allowed us to donate such a considerable donation to this amazing place.

Jeremy, Kayla, Marissa and Pranavi