Naugatuck – A 13 year-old boy with cerebral palsy wearing the same clothes and diapers for several days was one reason why Bryan Nurnberger decided in 2001 to make a difference in Mexico.
As an example of how far Nurnberger has come, he spent much of last week in a hospital room with the same boy, Ricardo, now 19, who had surgery to repair his groin and hamstrings because his constricted tendons prohibited him from sitting in his wheelchair. Ricardo, who is fed three meals a day, changed and bathed on a regular basis, would have never had the surgery without funding from the nonprofit organization Simply Smiles that Nurnberger started five years ago.
“The goal from the inception was to be as powerful as we could to fix all of the deplorable situations we saw,” said Nurnberger, 29, who left Wednesday for a month-long trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, and bordering towns. “I’m thrilled with where it’s going.”
When he walked through the doors of an orphanage in Oaxaca on a summer’s night in 2001, Ricardo wasn’t the only sad face Nurnberger saw. Many chldren went without food on a regular basis and lived in deplorable conditions. Now, children live in an orphanage called Casa Hogar, or a house that is a home, which offers three meals a day, educational opportunities, medical assistance, recreation, Internet access and other amenities to its more than 80 children.
The orphanage has become a model for other children’s shelters throughout poor areas of Mexico.
And Simply Smiles isn’t stopping there. It is constantly seeking donations and volunteers in an effort to do more.
Here are some of its current projects:
■The organization, which had raised roughly $800,000 for children, is finishing construction on a second “Casa Hogar” in a town about three hours north of Oaxaca that will serve another 75 children.
■Nurnberger is working with a warden of a local prison to bring 17 children currently living in the prison with their parents, who are inmates, into the second Casa Hogar.
■The group is in the process of building 33 homes for 127 people who live in a landfill that Nurnberger refers to as “Hell on Earth”. About 130 Simply Smiles volunteers help the families purchase material they need to build homes. Six houses have been constructed already.
Nurnberger, a borough native who runs Simply Smiles from a third floor office in the Nauguatuck Congregational Church on Division Street, said he’s been overwhelmed with the support people have given to his organization.
“This is growing more quickly than I ever thought it would,” Nurnberger said, adding that Simply Smiles wants to build a third Casa Hogar within the next year and a half.
All told, he hopes to build eight such orphanages, and it would cost about $11 million to complete his goal.
About 60 percent of the organization’s funds come from donations, and the other 40 percent comes from people sponsoring children. Donors can sponsor children for $30 to $120 a month, or $360 to $1440 a year. Ninety-eight percent of all donations go directly to children, a figure that is verified in the group’s fiscal records.
Nurnberger said the children and families need money, but they are often proud and feel awkward about taking handouts. That is why it’s important to approach them in a respectful way.
“We try very hard to not come in like the rich Americans who are going to save you,” he said. “We spend a good amount of time developing friendships with people. It turns into a situation where a friend is asking another friend for help. It’s like if you asked me to come help paint your house.”
“it’s a better feeling that way because it’s not just helping strangers,” he said. “You get to know these people, and they become your friends.”
Sitting next to one of these close friends, Ricardo, on Friday, Nurnberger said the teen’s pain is diminishing. Like most of the work Simply Smiles is doing in Mexico, the effort to fix Ricardo’s problem has taken some effort. But the end result will be “fantastic”.
“We explained to him that he has to sacrifice these days in order to have the next several years of comfort,” Nurnberger said.
