Location Ngoenga school, Dehra Dun, India
Type Health and education
Amount £2,150
Background
‘Ngoenga’ means ‘joyous’ in Tibetan and this inspiring and joyous school is home for 50 Tibetan children with special needs.
Ngoenga is the only residential school in north India dedicated to looking after young Tibetans with special needs. They support children with a wide range of disabilities, including hearing and visual difficulties, physical disabilities, autism, speech problems, learning difficulties, as well as emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Many of the children have complex physical needs and require regular physiotherapy sessions to keep them as healthy and mobile as possible.
Project
The staff at Ngoenga work hard to make sure the children are well looked after, but a shortage of funds means their time is often more stretched than it should be. This is particularly true for the school’s physiotherapist who works long hours and has a very physically demanding job.
A lot of the children at school require regularly physiotherapy sessions to keep them healthy and pain free.
When the children are feeling good, they can concentrate more on their school work and learning the skills which will make them more independent.
For the last five years, we have been sending a grant which has enabled the school to employ an extra physiotherapist. This means the children who need it can have 30 minutes a day of one-on-one physiotherapy treatment.
Having an extra physiotherapist is also a big help to the school’s existing physiotherapist. Together they can work together to give extra care to the children with more severe disabilities who need more than one pair of hands to treat them.