A spotlight on a young girl in our care
In a small home in Egypt, far from the bright clinics of America, lives a young girl who cannot move her arms. She was born this way. Her father has a disability. Her brothers have disabilities too. For most of her early life, the world had quietly decided what she could and could not do.
When her family first walked through the doors of one of our centers, they came carrying very little — except a hope they were almost afraid to name out loud. They had been told, again and again, in the gentle and devastating way these things are told: there is nothing more to be done.
Our therapists started where every child begins: with attention. With listening. With learning her name, her favourite colour, the way she liked her hair pulled back from her face. The therapy was patient and unspectacular — the kind of slow, daily work that does not photograph well, but builds a child up from the inside out.
And then one day, sitting on a small mat with her therapist, she reached for a puzzle piece — not with her hand, but with her foot. She studied it. She turned it. And, with the careful concentration of someone who has been waiting her whole short life for this moment, she fitted it into place.
Her mother cried. Her therapist cried. Then the little girl looked up, surprised at the fuss, and reached for the next piece.
Today she completes whole puzzles this way. She is learning letters. She is learning to feed herself. She is learning, perhaps for the first time, that she is a child whose mind and will are stronger than the body she was given. She is learning that she is seen.
This is not a story about disability. It is a story about what becomes possible when a child is surrounded by people who refuse to look away. It is a story made possible by sponsors, by donors, by a Coptic family of believers who decided that no Egyptian child would be carried alone.
She is one of more than 385 children in our care across 11 centers. Each one is a story, not a statistic. Each one is waiting for the next piece to fall into place.
This is not a story of disability. It is a story of what becomes possible when someone believes in you.
— Theodora Mission