ARNHEM, Netherlands -- Stichting Groot Klimmendaal (www.grootklimmendaal.nl), a major physical rehabilitation center in the Netherlands, has agreed to help Clear Path International's landmine survivor assistance efforts along the Thai-Burma border.
Under a two-year agreement, the Dutch hospital will provide $30,000 in funding and facilitate the involvement of its professional rehabilitation specialists as volunteers in eastern Thailand where CPI has an active program fabricating prosthetics, offering physical therapy and providing full-time care for landmine accident survivors from Burma.
The agreement was arranged by Lobke Dijkstra, physical therapist and CPI country representative in Thailand who splits her time between her job at Groot Klimmendaal and Clear Path's base in Mae Sot on the Thai border with Burma. CPI will maintain accommodations for volunteers from Klimmendaal and elsewhere, and help prepare them for their specialized activities in the border region.
Groot Klimmendaal's funding will be used to help cover CPI's two-year $130,000 budget for its survivor assistance activities along the border, including the training of new prosthetics fabrication technicians, continued support for existing fabrication workshops, creation of new workshops and fulltime care for severely disabled survivors in one of the largest refugee camps.
The two partners, who leave the door open to continue their relationship beyond 2008, hope their collaborative effort will channel new expertise to CPI's programs offering assistance to landmine amputees.
Already, Dijkstra's involvement as a physical therapist has led to training and better integration of physical rehabilitation in survivors' use of prostheses. A second professional volunteer from Groot Klimmendaal with expertise in psychological rehabilitation is expected to go to Thailand this fall.
Groot Klimmendaal, a 120-bed facility, has specialists in 16 fields related to rehabilitation, ranging from physical therapy and ergo therapy to musical, games and psychological therapy. It provides more than 135,000 hours of rehabilitation services to patients per year.
Since it was founded in 2000, Clear Path has provided medical, social and economic services to 4,000 landmine accident survivors in Southeast Asia, including more than 500 along the Thai-Burma border.
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