Twin Club Project with RC of João Pessoa: Home for Special Needs Children
Centro de Atividades Especias Odon Bezerra (CAEOB)

USR provided a grant through its member grants program. Special thanks go to Walter Ribeiro Santos and Emidio Vasconcelos Leitão da Cunha of the João Pessoa club for organizing the celebration.

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Final Project Report

Final Report to RI     List of Equipment

Dedication Photos
  
  

Equipment Purchased with Project Funds

     
     
 

Centro de Atividades Especias Odon Bezerra Welcomes University Sunrise Rotary
     
   

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Centro de Atividades Especiais “Odon Bezerra”
(From the center - translated by Emidio Vasconcelos Leitão da Cunha) 
 

            The Centro de Atividades Especiais Odon Bezerra (Center for Special Activities) (CAEOB), has as its main objective to practice the “inclusion” of the people with special needs and their families, as well as elderly people, for their personal, social and educational development.

            The practice of “inclusion” recommends that the society through its social systems should adapt itself to receive the people with special needs and elderly people to promote equity of opportunities regarding the physical, social and educational environments and the transportations systems. Also promoting equal opportunities of work, education, sports, recreation and social life.

            The center has as basic attributions to habilitate and rehabilitate people with special needs and elderly people, promoting and offering a better quality of life. For this purpose our team composed by physiotherapists, fonoaudiologists, social assistants, nurses, physicians, pedagogues, psychologists and dance instructors, most of them working as voluntary.

            In accordance with these principles, we develop the following activities:

Psychosocial educational – This is the starting point of the Center, in which we try to attend the patient and his family, providing more information regarding a better process of rehabilitation. It creates opportunities for the expression of doubts and difficulties and also promoting individual evaluations and directing internally and externally for diagnostic and treatment of the pathologies.

Psycho pedagogical – This is an educational attention carried out everyday with the children, adolescents and adults with low level, moderate and severe pathologies, leading to a better social conviviality and a reeducation of habits and behave.

Activities of physical education sports and leisure – Rehabilitates through recreation, swimming and other competitive sports. Develops the “motor area” and also yields moments of happiness and tranquility, promoting independency and mental and physical growth.

Activities of music and theater – It aims to discover and improve artistic potentialities aiming to give working opportunities, respecting the limitations.

Dance activities for rehabilitation – This activity is the one that gives more involvement to the patients and recognition to the Center, more than 60 people with special needs take part in it. It aims to reestablish the potential of movements, coordination, rhythm, ability, skill and to promote movements of individual and group creativeness, offering a better quality of life.

Music group – Offers alternatives to verify the musical skills, musical training to enter the music group and music as recreation.

Besides the above activities, the Center also maintains yearly activities such as:

-         Dance shows

-         Open games for Special People (Carried out every year)

-         Beneficent “cat walk” (Pageant?)

The Center survives with the donations received from the people in the community, very little official help from the State of Paraíba and the City of João Pessoa, and payment from less than 10% of the families that can afford to do so, and the selling of tickets for our dance, music and theater shows. The house where the Center is located is rented and this rental cost is itself responsible for a large part of our expenditures. Some of the equipment used in physiotherapy is brought by the owners who work with us as volunteers. Unfortunately we at the moment have no equipment for the Fonoaudiology work. Most of our work in this area is carried out without the use of sometimes very necessary equipments. However, we know that this equipment is very expensive and this is not part of our project for the moment. Our main request right now is to equip the physiotherapy area of the center.