Day 2 of Service Learning

Good Evening family, friends, and followers alike! Writing to you today are Andrea and Clare, two occupational therapy pracitioners and XU alumni. WOW. We had an awesome day today! At Daryl's home, we divided into two groups and were able to see 10 kids throughout the day, all of whom have various needs to be addressed (and all of whom are very sweet). The caregivers at the house were present during most of the sessions and very receptive to learning new ideas and continuing to work with the kids on therapy goals. In the afternoon, we spent some time working at Daryl's second location, where four children who have special needs are currently living.  It is amazing to see the compassion of all the people involved with working at this organization.

At Missionaries of the Highway, Andrea was on the wheelchair team with Carly, Sarah, and Claire. We also could not have accomplished so much without our amazing translators who were busy translating information to and from the family, as well as jumping in to work on the wheelchairs. We saw three children and adjusted three wheelchairs, fixed one walker, and fit a 12 year-old boy with his first wheelchair ever! The new wheelchair took four hours of team work, but the final product resulted in big smiles from both the boy and his parents. For sure, the end result made all the hard work worth it!

According to our sources (aka Erin, fellow XU alum and occupational therapy practitioner), the group at ABI started with a shoe fair.  The group fit shoes to all of the residents at ABI, who were very grateful for their new zapatos (translation: shoes).  Student/pracitioner pairs then spent the rest of the morning observing group routines and assessing some of the children's individual and sensory and oral needs. In the afternoon, the group ventured over to the Annex (a day program for 17 of the children at ABI) and spent some time observing and  treating children there with sensory and oral needs.

Tomorrow, we will be at our service sites (Daryl's group will be going to a different location so stay tuned) and spending two overnights near or at those locations.  We are looking forward to having extended hours of service during these days. FYI, we will rotate bloggers at each site for the next three days. Thanks for reading, we are off to coffee happy hour (shoutout:Rolando). As always, thanks for all the support and following our trip!