... provides life-changing surgeries to children worldwide.
Welcome to the Filipino Group of Mending Kids International!
Mending Kids International is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization that provides life-saving and life-changing surgeries to children in developing and underdeveloped countries, including the Philippines. From 2005 to 2009, 30 Filipino children became the recipients of MKI’s generosity through its various partner hospitals in Los Angeles. Since 2010, with the expansion of MKI’s programs, another 31 have so far benefited from the international surgeries, 27 at the Philippine Heart Center, 2 in Cebu hospitals, 1 in Israel, and 1 in India.
In the fall of 2009, realizing the importance of supporting the kids and their families as they go through the most difficult time in their lives, a group of Filipino professionals residing in the Los Angeles area decided to form the Filipino Group of MKI.
Originally intended to provide financial and emotional support to the children and their families, it has over the last 2 years, grown and become actively involved and more committed in raising funds to provide even more surgeries for more Filipino kids.
Right now, there are about 60 children, mostly with congenital heart disease, waiting for their turn to get their hearts fixed.
We welcome your support of Mending Kids and the Mending Kids Filipino group as we continue to create miracles in the lives of our children and their families, one child at a time, one life at a time.
For more information on joining our group, please contact Arlene Kamen, MKI Board Member, at [email protected]
Most Recent Children We've Helped
Randy, 1 year old
Philippines
Heart Patient
RonRon, 6 years old
Philippines
Heart Patient
Ashton Jay, 4 years old
Philippines
Anal Reconstruction
Kim, 5 years old
Philippines
Heart Patient
Joaquin, 10 years old
Philippines
Heart Patient
Merylou
Philippines
Facial Cleft
Current Happenings
Check back often for a listing of our current events.
Randy's Story:
Randy was born into an extremely poor family of four who sustained themselves on $1.15 U.S. per day, which his mother and father made selling palitaw (made from rice flour, shredded coconut and sugar) in the local Cebu City slum. Hospitals in Cebu told his parents that Randy would need at least two surgeries, costing several hundred thousand pesos, to survive childhood – completely unreachable for the small family. In better times, Randy’s dad had dreamed of becoming a computer technician. Now he used whatever spare pesos he had, to trawl the internet at the neighborhood cafe. Finally he found Mending Kids International, which was the turning point for baby Randy.
Two weeks after his successful heart surgery, baby Randy returned home to Padilla Street, Cebu City. During the months they spent in Tahan-Tahanan, his mother and father benefited from various alternative livelihood and poverty alleviation seminars. Years from now when Randy returns for his final heart surgery, perhaps his mother and father will have been able to expand their business horizons beyond the narrow confines of Cebu City's Padilla Street.
RonRon's Story:
Before he had his heart surgery, RonRon was always irritable and bad tempered. When he cried, he would turn blue, so neither his siblings nor his parents could ever tell him, “no.” He was too frail to go to school, so he never learned how to get along with other children. After his surgery, RonRon slowly but surely turned into the pink of health. When his IV line was removed, he immediately leapt out of bed and tore through the hospital wards. He was so strong that it took 3 adults to make him take his maintenance medicine. RonRon has now begun a new life as a real boy with rules to follow and people to get along with, which will be so much healthier for him and everyone who loves him.
Ashton Jay's Story:
Ashton Jay was born with an imperforate anus. His young mother was unemployed and his father, as a casual laborer, has no health insurance. Because of the family's poverty, it was several days after birth before he could have a colostomy, the first of several surgeries he needed to correct this defect. Ashton is an only child but his family cannot afford real colostomy bags. For the past five years Ashton's mother has made do with a plastic lid from a coffee jar, a strip of garter and 5" x 9" plastic bags. That is PINOY- ingenuity which finds a way where poverty has set seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Last September, Ashton had his long overdue 2nd surgery known as a "pull through". Now, even while he continues to dream about going to college and making something of himself in order to help his loving parents, he has a better and a bigger chance that these dreams could come true someday.
Kim's Story:
Four year old Kim Marie Solon wanted nothing more than to run and play like other kids. But like so many children with congenital heart defects, she tired easily and was prone to coughing fits and respiratory infections. She was hospitalized so often that preschool was out of the question.
After surgery at the Philippine Heart Center, Kim could not get over how far she could walk. Now she can ride her 2 wheeler all around their little barrio in Cebu.
When the Philippine school year began this June, she proudly proclaimed she was in Kindergarten. For all these new possibilities, Kim and her family say "Daghan salamat (thank you from the bottom of our hearts) to MKI and to the Philippine Heart Center."
Joaquin's Story:
The worst thing about having to stay for a month at the Philippine Heart Center Service Ward while getting treated for endocarditis is that Joaquin is missing school. His 4th grade classmates at the Legarda Elementary School wrote him cards sending wishes that he would be able to rejoin them after the holiday break. His teacher also came to visit him in the hospital.
It is not easy for a bright and curious boy like Joaquin to be cooped up in the hospital. After undergoing a painful phlebotomy, he did not want his mother Jona to go back to her job as a casino dealer, or to school where she is a senior in Mass Communications. However being an intelligent child, Joaquin realized his solo parent mom has to work and get a college degree in order to support him and to provide them with a better future. But he misses his mom, so he mothers his stuffed animals, dressing them up in thrift shop baby clothes. Through his ordeal, Joaquin has managed to keep his sense of humor and chuckled that he and his stuffed toy monkey are both blue. But he knows that after he recovers from his open heart surgery, he won't have to worry about turning blue ever again.
Merylou's Story:
Merylou was born with a facial cleft, which left her so deformed, every year she would quit school, unable to handle the unbearable teasing from children. For 10 long years, her mother brought her to every medical mission that came to town. But each time, she was sent home, not knowing if and when help would ever come. Finally, a Fil-Am association found her, and brought her to Mending Kids International. After a delicate transformation, she is happy and excited about the future that lies ahead.
2307 W Olive Avenue, Suite B Burbank, CA 91505 p. 818.843.MEND (6363) f. 818.843.6365
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