484 chapter 50
• Repair services: In addition to producing
items for sale, a team of disabled village
rehabilitation workers can provide a wide
variety of repair services. The PROJIMO
team in Mexico repairs plows, welds broken
machinery and tools, repairs bicycles, solders
holes in buckets and car radiators, re-soles
boots and sandals, and sharpens axes. (They
have even repaired broken plaster saints
from the church!) All these services they
provide using the same skills and equipment
that they use in making wheelchairs and
rehabilitation aids. No one else in the village
provides these skilled repair services. They
have therefore done a lot to increase the
villagers’ respect and appreciation for
disabled persons in the community.
A PROJIMO wheelchair builder welds the
broken frame of a village boy’s bicycle.
• An ‘auxiliary fund’ to help poor families pay for aids and services: As we have discussed,
many families cannot pay for the services or aids their child needs, even though a community
program provides these at low cost. Some kind of economic assistance is needed if the disabled
child’s needs are to be adequately met.
To provide such assistance. PROJIMO has arranged tor an ‘auxiliary fund’ provided by outside
donors. The fund, which is kept in a separate bank account, pays to PROJIMO the difference
between what a poor family pays and the actual cost of aids or services received. Thus the workers
get full payment for the services and aids they provide. In effect, the fund aids poor families, not the
program directly. This allows the team to have a better measure of its accomplishments. If the team
works efficiently and gains the necessary management skills, in time the program should need no
more direct outside funding. The payments from the auxiliary fund, together with whatever families
are able to give, should cover the cost of wages, supplies and maintenance. This will mean that the
program has in a sense become self-sufficient—even though poor families still need financial aid.
Project PROJIMO began to approach self-sufficiency on these terms in its third year.
An argument can be made for trying to obtain government financing for the ‘auxiliary fund’. (This
is being done in Nicaragua. See footnote on p 482.) The fund could even be managed by a local
official (if honest) or another administrator outside the rehabilitation program. At the end of each
month, the team could give the administrator an accounting of the services and aids provided, their
calculated value, and the amount paid by families, with receipts. Payment would be made, as if by
contract.
Below is a form that can be used for keeping records for money to be paid by the auxiliary fund
(adapted from Project PROJIMO).
Disabled village Children