The 60 kids being served at His Wings Ranch require a wide ranch of therapy to help with a wide range of emotional and physical needs. This includes Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Behavioral Specialist, Speech Pathologists and Orthotists to fit leg braces. As a licensed physical Therapist Sue is able to train and hire some of the talent locally in Mexico but much of the support comes from volunteers and college University Therapy groups from colleges in the United States. Finding groups, coordinating their travel and hosting them when they arrive is a major undertaking. Your donations help facilitate therapy for the kids at His Wings Ranch.
Kids need wheelchairs and arm braces to be able to simple navigate the Mexican dirt roads to connect with others in their community. Because they are growing kids, they outgrow their chairs and braces. We have responded by creating an entire wheelchair workshop dedicated to customization and repair. Like a shoe store, we need to increase our chair size availability. We also need to be able to repair and adapt chairs on the fly. Your donations help pay for repair parts like new wheels and pads as well as a wider selection of leg braces.
Some of our kids have severe health challenges. His Wings Ranch has a relationship with Shriner’s hospitals in the United States as well as the “Fresh Start Surgical Gifts” program to get these kids medical attention in the US without cost. Your donations help to coordinate the logistics from paying for passports and Visas to paying for an Uber to the airport and a plane ticket to Shriner’s hospital. Your support enables free surgical gifts saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Keeping families with special needs kids together is our calling. In Mexico there is cultural pressure to put special needs kids in orphanages. Instead we help parents to take care of their own children by helping establish basic housing, providing blankets and food and supplies and coordinating daycare so parents can work.
Special needs kids in Mexico are simply not served in the public school system. The newly formed special needs classroom at His Wings Ranch are the only option for local kids with needs. Your donations help purchase school supplies from pens, paper, and crafts to tables and chairs. It is also used to pay for Mexican Teachers who are willing to teach the kids for a fraction of the cost of a teacher in the US.
We are building a campus for special needs kids which requires building a youth center with a basketball court, Putting bark chips under our new special needs playground, constructing a handicap access path to move from the medical bodega to the classrooms and installing fencing to keep coyotes and bandits out. We need tradesman to come and build with materials we provide. Many have volunteered their time and expertise. Your donations support workers staying at a local church dormatory as well as hiring Mexican contractors for specialists jobs like pouring long concrete walkways.
We have received 5 donated portable buildings for classrooms and a youth center. Each was transported in two halves to get here which damaged the roof and ceiling. Each also is placed on an elevated foundation which requires ramps and stairs to be built to access them. Plywood, cement, posts, screws, nails, roofing shingles, drywall are all needed to repair and adapt the buildings. Your support of these basic facilities is leveraged into critical support for over 60 kids in the program.
When donors learn about our needs they may gift a wheelchair or school supplies but they still need to be transported to Mexico. Fortunately His Wings Ranch has a storage room in Chula Vista where these items can be stored while awaiting cross border transportation. Your donation helps with the logistics of getting items across the border both in terms of cross border transportation and in some cases import taxes .
