Helping handicapped children

“When I was in Vietnam, I met many handicapped children. It is really important to support this initiative which will help make them autonomous, earn their living and, above all, find their place in society.”
Florence Regnault

A consequence of the Vietnam War thirty years ago that is still being passed down to today’s children, many babies are even now being born with severe deformities. Many young mothers, unfortunately contaminated by the toxic molecules of the defoliant agent orange sprayed during the war and now permanently seeped into the aquifer of certain soils, continue to give birth to deformed babies.
The Christina Noble France Association, active in this country for many years helping its street children, has decided to come to the aid of these children in particular. This association, a member of the Christina Noble Children Foundation established by an Irish woman moved by children’s distress around the world, has already sponsored more than 140,000 Vietnamese children and has developed education, health, surgery and micro-credit programs to help children and their families.

Autonomous, like their friends

In four regions of southern Vietnam, the association wants to provide young handicapped children with relatively sophisticated wheelchairs: all-terrain wheelchairs, with small motors so that the weaker children, with little strength in their arms, can still get about almost everywhere despite the very uneven street surfaces. In 2005, wheelchairs of this type were tested by one hundred children. Christina Noble France now wants to gift these “vehicles” to 750 other children. The donation made by the Veolia Foundation will be used to buy two hundred wheelchairs, but above all it will encourage these children to benefit from the autonomy that has been denied them so far because of the lack of appropriate resources.