Harrisonburg prosthetic practitioner returns from helping children in Kenya
HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - After a powerful and eye-opening experience in Kenya, a prosthetic practitioner in Harrisonburg wants to spread the word to other Friendly City residents about the need to help those all over the world living with limb loss.
After a two-week mission, Indi Hewavita, a Harrisonburg prosthetic practitioner, has returned to the Valley. While in Kenya, he was providing over 51 prosthetic limbs for children working with the Limb Kind Foundation the foundation is a nonprofit group that travels to different countries helping provide prosthetics.
”This is my 19th year of doing prosthetics, and when it’s a child, it’s even more difficult, especially in far away places where they’re not readily accepted, and some, in many cases, [are] ostracized or shunned because of their conditions,” Hewavita said. ”Here, we work with the healthcare industry that we have, and when you go to countries like Kenya, and especially rural areas where healthcare might not function the way that it does here in the United States, there is nothing we get back there, everything is provided free of charge.”
This was Hewavita’s second time working with Limb Kind Foundation after going with them two years ago Sri Lanka, and each time he said has been inspirational to see how much help he and the other volunteers can provide.
“When I was there, I was imagining myself and the community that surrounds me being a part of me, and you could directly see the impact of how that funding would turn into action, and in these cases I am the hands and feet of the community that funds me. So I think I was in some ways emboldened by that idea, and I told myself, ‘hey, why not get Harrisonburg involved? Why not tell the community and whoever wants to get involved and to almost make a movement out of this’,” Hewavita said.
Hewavita added that his hope is for the Harrisonburg community to recognize how difficult it is to be someone who has lost a limb. He also hopes others will go to show support for the limb kind foundation.
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