Finally ... A blog entry!! From Tuesday April 19th (day 8):

Today's therapy (Tuesday April 19th here) really showed the level of progress that can be made for most of the children with a 2 week intensive speech therapy model!  Of course our reaction as in past years is that we'd love to have 2 more weeks, months, years for some - which is closer to what would be provided at home in U.S.! But the children, parents, volunteers and staff have worked very hard to accomplish so much in a short time!

Lots of busy days have left little blog time! And wifi is available in evening... When we crash relatively early!! But here's a few pictures to give a picture of our therapy days!

8 full days now of 2 sessions (sometimes more) of speech therapy, per child, per day! We have 22 patients with cleft palate repairs; additionally we see 2 other children from the Community of Hope Special Education Center (COHSEC) for daily speech therapy. When we finish speech therapy with our children with cleft palate ( usually about 4:30 or5) we have worked with other children from COHSEC with developmental disabilities,teaching their special education teacher (Lorena)and physical therapist (MaryFe) strategies for addressing speech and language development with their students! This has in some ways proven to be more challenging with such limited resources! There is no limit though on the compassion and commitment of the teachers and families at the Center! A shout out and thank you to the local speech pathologists and OT's in Denver for your donations of materials, toys, supplies and books!! They have been well received and put to use already!! 

We have only  2 days of speech therapy left! The first week seemed long (the record setting heat was the main contributor!) but now that we're nearing the end of the speech mission, we are sad to think about saying goodbye to friends made and children near and dear to our hearts!