This project was launched at the 2014 Ryder-Cheshire National Biennial Conference in Sydney. It was a trial project designed to raise $1000 to print educational materials for the Klibur Domin Outreach Team in Timor-Leste to raise awareness of cerebral palsy (CP) symptoms in children and to inform their families how to seek assistance for medical diagnosis and physical and educational therapy.
The primary purpose of this project was to raise funds using social media rather than traditional fundraising.
The project had a secondary purpose which was to expose the current Ryder-Cheshire membership to the advantages of using current, new and emerging technologies, in all of their various forms, to access a wider audience, and in particular to talk to a younger audience in a manner that they prefer to communicate.
The Klibur Domin Community Based Rehabilitation Program was set up in 2006 to identify adults and children with disabilities living in the outlying areas. As part of this program the Klibur Domin Mobile Outreach Team provides assessment, therapy, equipment and ongoing support for the adults, children and their families. In the geographical area that Klibur Domin supports, approximately 60% of the Community Based Rehabilitation Team’s clients are people with CP, the majority of whom are children.
The $1000 target was oversubscribed to $1270 which enabled the team, in conjunction with the Klibur Domin Team to design, produce and deliver the CP educational materials comprising of:
- Teaching flip chart for the Klibur Domin Outreach Team to use to reinforce the education of CP when they visit villages
- Posters for schools, community health centres and villages
- Mini information cards for parents and especially new mothers to become aware of early signs of CP and where and how to seek support for their babies and children.
It is great example of how Ryder-Cheshire can raise funds from non-traditional sources using new technologies and tapping in to a new support base.
Thank you to Expo Print and Tech Printing Services at Australian Catholic University-Ballarat for their printing of climate supportive coating on the materials. Appreciation to the artist, Veronica Mc Lindon for the illustrations. Special thanks to all the people who were able to carry the materials to Klibur Domin; Dianne Hadden who was on her way to volunteer at Klibur Domin, Damascus College and Ballarat Grammar School students who were visiting Ainaro and to Barry Flynn from St John of God Hospital In Ballarat who was on secondment to the Hospital in Dili.
Thank you to Dianne McGrath, Terry Warr and Siobhan Reeves for their fine work on this project.
Leo Rennie, Project Manager