Authored by CPI Co-founder Imbert Matthee.

When I was here in August, workmen were just starting to dig a foundation. Now, the new Le Thuy community-based physical rehabilitation training center has been completed. With the guidance of the center’s physical therapy nurse, several dozen disabled children use its equipment eagerly.

In one room, they pump the rowing machine and walk the thread mill. In the other, a teacher shows them how to exercise with weights. They are strengthening their muscles and, in some cases, relearning how to use their bodies.

Funded by Clear Path International and the East Meets West Foundation, the training center is the only of its kind in Quang Binh Province. It’s fully integrated with the school for disabled children on the same grounds.

Only two months in operation, center director Hu says, the training center is already showing results: “Some children only knew how to crawl. Now they stand and touch the wall.”

The center serves 19 out of the 28 communes in Le Thuy District, which has a total population of 145,000. About 70 children attend five classes a day – four academic and one dedicated to physical therapy. Twenty children live in the center’s dorm.

The staff was trained by specialists from the Vietnam Cuba Friendship Hospital in Dong Hoi, the provincial capital. The children’s parents go through an initial two-day training course so they can continue the exercise regime at home. Some parents attend their children’s training classes when they can, Hu says.

Former CPI country director Hugh Hosman worked with East Meets West to set up the center. EMW paid for the construction. Clear Path paid for the equipment and the training.

The center is a good example of our capacity-building goal for mine-affected communities in the former Demilitarized Zone. Le Thuy District has 691 disabled children, 300 of whom are mobility-impaired. Forty-two children from the district are scheduled to receive surgery at the Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Hospital, after which they will come to the training center for rehabilitation.

It’s already a great community resource and could well become a model for similar centers in the DMZ area, where these kinds of facilities are still sorely lacking at the local level.