Once a year the Kolewa-team, assisted by interns and volunteers organise, together with teachers from Yayasan Corti and scout/obstetrician Putu from Karangasem, a family-weekend on Bali. The program for parents from hearing-impaired children is crafted by a team of experts from inside our field partners and the help of Dutch volunteers/interns, In the past year, a trip to the Bali Zoo was planned, where children met with animals and learned the sign language for them.
Passing down knowledge, the sharing of experiences and new developments in the medical world stands central. During the evening hours, the gathering is being used a lot by the parents to talk to each other about the raising of their child with a disability.
The children are kept busy with our activities-team. The emphasis lies on creativity and sport & games in combination with speech training. Parents and children commonly use meals together. The interest in these family gatherings is enormous. Yearly we can count on the participation of at least 75 – 100 persons. Kolewa bears the costs for these events.
Family gatherings on the NTT islands:
The family gatherings on islands like Rote, Flores and Sumba give a different impression. These are weekends where cleft lip & palate-patients are recalled for a checkup of mostly the palate and jaw development. Circa 40% needs to be put on the waiting list again for a follow-up operation or a bone graft. But besides this there is also time for sport & games, besides the many hours we spend on speech training, brushing teaching and education about hygiene’s and eating healthy.
Our team stays with the former patients and their parents in a local hotel and is supported by the free-lance scouts on the spot. If possible the children travel directly to Bali for treatment.
