Phase 2 - La Mesa del Reino: Lima, Peru

8/14/2019

Mission Essential Goals for Peru:

Build and distribute 4 standers as a pilot program starting new partnership with La Mesa del Reino (LMR)
Ensure that LMR has internal capacity to produce more standing frames
Contact local organizations to begin building distribution network
Train PT’s from various organizations in the use of the SWM standing frame.

It was an action-packed day. Arriving in Lima, Peru at 1 am and was greeted by Julia and her daughter Dani taken to my hotel. Julia is the director of LMR and is a psychological therapist, Dani is an occupational therapist who works for another local NGO. I met with Julia for breakfast and discussed the plans for the next couple of days. She told me a little of the history about how LMR became interested in standing frames. She described that a local physical therapist and good friend of hers had asked Julia if she knew anyone who had a standing frame and at that time Julia said no but began praying for a standing frame. Within one week she received the email from Stand With Me asking if they had interest in partnering with us to make standing frames. She said that she believes SWM was an answer to the prayers of the local therapist to serve the local need for standing frames. She also updated me on the preparatory work they had accomplished before my arrival including the localization of CNC shops, material sourcing and pricing and contacting local organizations to schedule meetings to introduce our standing frame.

From breakfast we set out to the nearby woodworking shop run by Jose Luis called “Capacitados”, which means “The Capable”, and is a workshop where he trains people with various disabilities carpentry to the level of their ability. Capacitados will be our primary production facility for the moment and the students will be intimately involved in the production of the standing frames. I took the opportunity to explore the shop and verified that the shop already had all necessary equipment to assemble the standing frames and had a chance to discuss with Jose Luis information about the upcoming production. We are ready to begin as soon as tomorrow afternoon!

From the Capacitados workshop, Julia and I proceeded to Prite Callao which is a school for over 180 children with disabilities of all kinds. The director Yerika Villanueva showed us around the school which has 7 private therapy rooms decked out with colorful toys and learning tools. We had heard that Prite Callao had received a SWM standing frame about 2 years ago from our shop in Arequipa, Peru (south of lima 17 hr drive) however it turns out that was not the case. Yerika showed us two non-SWM standing frames that they have in their clinic, neither of which is very useful due to the poor adjustability or lack of support provided. When we showed her and some of the Prite Callao therapists pictures of our standing frame they became very excited and exclaimed, “this is exactly what we have been hoping and looking for”. We set up two sessions at their center for early next week to train their whole therapy staff in the use of standing therapy and the SWM standing frame.
Next we headed over to La Mesa del Reino’s facilities named “Qumi”. There we began contacting local CNC shops that we will use to cut out the plywood parts of or standers. I turns out that Julia is also a graphic designer so she has the computer program and skills to make edits to the standing frame CNC files at LMR, so we don’t have to pay an engineer to make the changes. So we set about editing the computer files to reflect the most recent updates to the design based on feedback from Guatemala earlier this week.
In the evening I went with Juan Marcos to the local Sodimac, the Peruvian equivalent of Home Depot, and we purchased the 2x4 and 2x3 planks. Those combined with the hardware and items I brought from Guatemala combine so that we now have all the materials required for the batch of 4 standers.

Finally, 9 staff and patients from LMR and myself went out to a rotisserie chicken dinner as a team to get to know each other. This group of people are extremely talented and driven to help improve the lives of people with disabilities. It is now midnight, and I am exhausted, but satisfied with the immense progress that we made today. We are even slightly ahead of schedule. I cannot believe how smoothly things are going. It is incredible to see how god provides.