She can hear only birds so far

April 11, 2010. Dear friends. Little Ira Kuzheleva needs our help again. Last time we helped her family to purchase a washing-machine and some essential medicines. As her mother has informed us at present Ira visits a commercial developmental center once a week – each lesson with a speech therapist costs 400 rubles  (about $33). And she needs to be taken there by taxi as the center is situated in a suburb of Moscow. So each trip is 300 rubles. Besides a speech therapist visits her at her place, a lesson also costs 400 rubles. Thus to study during the spring and summer Ira needs 17.600 rubles (about $580).It will be very hard for the girl and her mother without our help.

November 16, 2009. Ira Kuzheleva is 8 years old. But she cannot walk yet. She is unable to eat and drink by herself. Nor can she talk. Her diagnosis heavy structural damage of central nervous system with psychoverbal under-development and para-autistic syndrome.

Marina, Ira’s mother is a widow. Her husband died a few years ago because of a severe disease and she was left alone with two children and her old mother who is ill, too. How odes she manage it all alone? Give the girl away to a boarding house – doctors insist.  But Marina is decidedly against it: “I know how they treat children there. I won’t send my daughter there while I’m alive, not for anything in the world”. Ira  is listening to her mother and smiling. No, she doesn’t understand anything. She just sees her mother, and she is happy.

She is no less happy when at the Social Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Children they put on a tape with birds singing and animals making sounds. In fact even if children with autism don’t hear human voices and don’t respond to them they still hear the sounds in the wood, they can hear birds and animals. And probably even understand them?

Ira has been being taken to various clinics and doctors since she was three. But with no avail. And Marina seems to have given up the hope to ever see her daughter running happily up to her or playing with  other children. Ira is alone all the time. Only in the Social Rehabilitation Center does she meet her peers.  There she does smile. That is why Marina takes her daughter to the Center twice a week though there is no real improvement in her state. It is quite a long way away and the treatment costs 2000 rubles a month, which breaks a gap in her family budget. Besides that Marina needs some money for her mother’s medicines.

It is obvious that she cannot work with two gravely people on her hands (Ira needs constant care). How do they manage to survive?  “My only income is disability pension. It is so small it is not enough even for one person. We haven’t got enough money to buy food, we can’t buy pampers for the girl. To put it short we live in poverty.”

Solidarity Foundation has  allocated 5000 rubles for this family. Now we need to collect 20.000 more to buy medicines that Ira is to take for half a year. And the family absolutely needs a washing machine besides, because washing by hand takes so much time.

Altogether 35.000 rubles or about $1150. Travelling expenses to the Center not included.

Almighty said: “(Alms are) for the poor who are straitened for the cause of Allah, who cannot travel in the land” (Qur’an, 2:273).  Brothers and sisters, lets help Kuzhelevs family who applied to our Foundation. Because “Whatsoever good thing ye spend, it will be repaid to you  in full, and ye will not  be wronged”  (The same sura, ayat 272).

December 16, 2009. Ira Kuzheleva was given 25.000 rubles and the following drugs: Asparcam, Cogitum, Nootropil, Sanopax, Fenibut, Cerebrolysin, Pantocalcin, Neuromultivit, Magne B6 – to the amount of 7689 rubles. The family and our Foundation are very grateful to all  those who gave their help.

January 2010. An “Indesit” washing machine was purchased for Ira’s family. Thank you very much for your help!

February 2010. Ira Kuzheleva was given 5000 rubles.

May 2010. 18.000 rubles were transferred for Ira’s family. She keeps taking lessons from a speech therapist. She also visits Children’s Developmental Center. We want to thank all those who haven’t been indifferent to the girl’s future.