Physical Therapist For Disabled Children

Casa Hogar Bencaleth in Tegucigalpa, Honduras provides a loving home for 25 profoundly disabled children. They were in desperate need of a physical therapist for these special kids.

When we visited the home in 2015, we saw that the children were well cared for except for one critical gap: many were literally curling up because the home couldn’t afford a physical therapist.

We provided an immediate grant for a full-time therapist, who travels four hours each day to provide these therapies which have greatly improved their quality of life.

The home also provides therapy to those in the local community, which is extremely important to children like Jonathan, a 6-year-old Honduran boy who appeared healthy at birth, according to his devoted mother, Wendy, a woman who lives alone in extreme poverty.

But when 8-month-old Jonathan’s development wasn’t equal to other children his age, Wendy took him to a physician where he was diagnosed with both physical and cognitive disabilities.

At first, a local organization provided therapy but when he was dropped from their program, he began to attend public school where, wheelchair-bound, he was mistreated by both teachers and classmates. Jonathan was failing fast. In just one year of therapy with Bencaleth, Jonathan is out of the wheelchair and taking his first small steps!

The World Orphan Fund has supported a therapist at the home for the past seven years. Additionally, in 2021 the home was struggling to pay for food, largely because in-country donations plummeted during the pandemic. It costs only $1,400 a month to feed these children and as part of our emergency food support our donors covered 5 months of food.