A Path To Mobility
Eighty percent of the world’s amputees reside in the developing world—only 2 percent have access to adequate health care.
By Allison O’Connell
Fabiola, a prosthetic technician, welcomes Breyner with a warm smile as he enters the clinic on crutches.
A year prior, 7-year-old Breyner’s leg had been removed during his battle with cancer. Breyner and his mother Gabriela had made their first two-and-a-half hour trip to a Range of Motion Project (ROMP) clinic in Zacapa, Guatemala just three months earlier. They heard the nonprofit gave free prostheses to children in need.
ROMP provided Breyner with a prosthetic leg. For three months, the little boy used it to walk, run, and jump. But as Breyner continued to grow, his prosthesis became uncomfortable, and he was forced to begin using crutches again.
Inside the ROMP clinic, Fabiola measures Breyner and finds he has grown two centimeters. His prosthesis will need to be slightly lengthened to enable him to comfortably walk again. Carlos, a prosthetic assistant, adjusts Breyner’s prosthesis in the ROMP workshop, changing out the rod that serves as Breyner’s lower leg for a slightly longer one. With his newly adjusted prosthesis, Breyner confidently strolls through the parallel bars in the clinic. He is mobile once again.
Breyner is one of more than 1,000 patients that ROMP served in 2015 alone. Thanks in part to an innovative partnership with TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site, ROMP is transforming more lives than ever before — and patients aren’t the only ones whose paths have been altered.
From internship to corporate partnership
Patrick Mathay discovered ROMP as a student at University of Kansas. He spent a summer as a ROMP intern and continued to volunteer for the nonprofit once he graduated 2009 and took a full-time job at TripAdvisor. Patrick balanced his duties for the company — which serves millions of monthly Web visitors every month — with his dedication to ROMP.
He devoted his nights, weekends, and vacations to ROMP, conducting effectiveness surveys and providing fundraising support (which included a 78-day bicycle ride from Oregon to Guatemala).
Once Patrick had seen ROMP’s impact first hand — and understood the incredible need for its free services — he wanted to do everything he could to help. Eighty percent of the world’s amputees reside in the developing world, yet only 2 percent have access to adequate health care, according to ROMP.
“The Range of Motion Project exists to show the world a new approach: one that says that amputees are not disabled by a missing limb, but a missing prosthesis; one that says disability is caused by broken bodies, but by broken healthcare systems,” a ROMP video explains.
Juana Tecu Román knows what it feels like to rise above a broken body and a broken healthcare system.
The single mother was traveling to Salamá, Guatemala on a long, single lane bridge when a bus sped past her car and hit her vehicle, crushing her leg. After her leg was amputated, Juana, 47, lost her office job and her ability to support her daughter. She also has diabetes, which further complicated her health and mobility.
ROMP will soon give Juana a custom-fitted prosthetic leg.
“I would just like to be able to walk again, so that I may return to work. I am seeking independence and hope that with my prosthesis I will begin to value myself again,” she told ROMP.
Patrick wanted to do more to help more people like Juana and Breyner. He connected ROMP with the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation, which accepts grant proposals from nonprofits where its employees have volunteered for at least six months.
“At the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation, employee engagement is very important to us. We provide a range of opportunities for our people to give back throughout the year. Our Employee Volunteer Grant program allows us the unique opportunity to recognize employees who conduct their own civic engagement at a very high level outside of the workplace and helps us support inspiring organizations like ROMP, whom we would never have known, all over the world,” said Tali Golan, Head of TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation.
Patrick’s support paid off.
ROMP has won multiple grant awards from the TripAdvisor Charitable Foundation and GlobalGiving, which vets, moderates, and manages all grants made through TripAdvisor’s Employee Volunteer Grant Program. To date, GlobalGiving has awarded more than $7 million in grants to nonprofits through the partnership.
A clinic transformed
Support from TripAdvisor has helped ROMP evolve into a prosthetic industry leader in underserved communities. The ROMP clinic in Guatemala started as a single room where prosthetic technicians saw patients and built prosthetic molds. Today, it’s a full-service rehabilitation center that has served more than 3,000 patients. It now boasts two patient rooms, a waiting area, parallel bars, a workshop, and a 3D printing lab.
TripAdvisor’s investment in ROMP has also strengthened its operations, helping it to transform from a volunteer-based organization to one with a small, but strong team of full-time employees in Guatemala, Ecuador, and the United States.
“Looking back, this experience completely altered my worldview, and continues to define my work today,” Patrick told his alma mater of his work with ROMP.
Breyner isn’t the only one who found a perfect fit.
