A team from Accomplish will visit the Heart of Mercy project in June, which cares for disabled children and their families. Accomplish's founder, Rebecca Cornish MBE and volunteer Julia Tseayo - both physiotherapists - plan to hold clinics during their visit and to conduct training sessions with the Heart of Mercy's leadership team. They have already held an online training session via zoom.
Rebecca and Julia will be joined by trustee Sue Baldock. They will take a collection of therapy toys with them to Malawi to start a toy library. The Heart of Mercy's leadership team, which visits disabled children every month, will give each child a toy to borrow. The following month, the team will return with a rucksack full of toys so that each child can choose a new one. Therapy toys help children to develop their fine motor skills.
This is a challenging time to be visiting southern Malawi as the region struggles to cope with the effects of Cyclone Freddy. The strongest cyclone on record in the southern hemisphere, Freddy ripped through roads and buildings last month. The homes of six families from the Heart of Mercy project were destroyed, as well as many more smaller buildings such as toilets.
The families belonging to the Heart of Mercy project were already struggling due to poor harvests, galloping inflation and huge increases in food prices. Several of these families are subsistence farmers whose crops and livestock have been damaged by the cyclone.
Visits to our African projects are vital as they give us the best insight into the development and running of the projects and the opportunity to meet some of the children who benefit. The volunteers and trustees who travel to Africa do so at their own expense. Accomplish is indebted to their generosity and extremely grateful for the heart-warming reports they bring back.
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