I am Anne Franchesca North from England. I am a retired English teacher. I was introduced to Valerie Taylor in February 2012, by a mutual friend and Valerie invited me to return as soon as I could to help with English teaching at CRP. I wanted to continue to be of use as a teacher and I saw there was a need for support in the learning and speaking of English at CRP.
My stay at CRP was a life-affirming and deeply rewarding experience for me. : It is a welcoming and very caring place. I feel much supported as a visitor. Everyone – staff, students and patients made me feel welcomed and appreciated in so many ways. I can only say that on my return visit – which I plan to make early 2013, bringing, I hope some useful resources for CRP. I miss the warmth of Bangladesh – and most of all, its people – with whom I was lucky enough to make friends with during my stay.
Phil Commons – a returning volunteer and Trustee gives an account of her recent trip
I arrived back in Bangladesh on Monday 28th Jan after a forty two hours journey from Manchester. The departure delay of six hours because of the snow meant that myself and two other experienced physios missed our connection in Dubai – however in Dhaka, the driver was still there patiently waiting for us to appear as he had done the previous day.
There are two terminals now in the airport and, you’ve guessed it – we waited in the wrong one – but finally it was resolved “no problem”, and we headed for CRP to begin a three weeks stint of teaching and upgrading physiotherapy skills in current staff.
Many of our ex-students are now heads of departments which are busy and challenging as CRPs therapy services have become well known in Bangladesh. Patients arrive from far afield with high expectations and the level of severity of their impairments is high. What is impressive is the length families will go to seek out help for their relatives. Sadly, however, a lot of people have not been educated about their physical problems and have little idea what is and isn’t possible. One of our early emphases has been the need to educate and empower patients as a key principle in treatment.
I remind myself that therapy training is still relatively new in Bangladesh and the present staff have grown up in a clinical environment where there have been few senior staff to advise them. Given this situation it is impressive to see the second generation students they have trained coming through as interns and having a good grounding in the basic principles of their profession.
Our teaching sessions have so far gone very well though having 80 in two of the classes took some handling – the first of these was a class on balance re-training and was practical. The whole afternoon took on the atmosphere of a gala -to say the students enjoyed watching their colleagues react to being pushed off balance and do timed up and go tests etc.. Is an understatement. I resorted to a whistle for crowd control. This worked very well and seemed to add to the general festivities. If having fun helps you to learn then we should get a few PhDs. from the group.
The volunteer’s guest house is full of an interesting medley of volunteers – two of these are bravely starting off the teaching of the new master’s course in PT .along with two of CRPs ex- students who have recently completed their master’s degrees in London. One interesting cultural barrier for the two nationals to overcome is that their pupils are older and technically more senior than they, so the classroom dynamics will be interesting.
The spinal injury and stroke rehabilitation work is in full flow and the need to upgrade the skills of the staff to equip them to train larger numbers of students coming through the programs is clear. The hunger to learn is also clear so we as a small team are raising are our game and doing our best.
At this morning’s staff meeting -the CEO gave a timely reminder that patients are the pinnacle around which this organisation functions and we are here to serve the patients. As I looked around at the staff which now number over 700, I thought about the early days in Farm gate where the veranda was the overflow for extra beds, the bed sheets were brown and the patients peeled the potatoes and made paper bags from newspapers. There were a handful of PT assistants and one physio – no OTs and no Speech and Language therapists. There was no Redaway Hall and badminton tournament, no Bangladesh Health Professions Institute and no 14 storey building in Mirpur. Patients were loaded onto a truck to move about, and occupational therapy was Wendy Best leading manicure sessions. The changes that have occurred are really remarkable.
My impression, judging from the huge development in the shopping complexes in Savar and Dhaka and numbers of smart cars on the roads, is that now there is more prosperity in the country generally. To what extent this has filtered to the grassroots level to me is yet unclear but I feel that in a small way that myself and many others like me – ex volunteers and the background army of fund raisers far and wide have contributed to the changes I can see here in CRP. . “Achievement by co-operation” describes CRP’s journey thus far. I hope that this is the start of a journey that sees disabled people fully integrated into the society with equal access to education, work, health care and opportunity and where the devastating avoidable injuries, the results of which are before our eyes here on a daily basis become a thing of the past.
Phil Commons – Lecturer in Physiotherapy – Leeds Metropolitan University
Jill Fisher – Neurophysiotherapist – Leeds
Helen Shearer -Neurophysiotherapist.
