A young woman from Huddersfield is using her experience of life with a false limb by spreading awareness of the difficulties faced by disabled children in less developed countries.
Clemmie Rimmer, 19, has a lower left leg prosthesis due to complications at birth, but despite this has still managed to do dancing and sport.
The former Greenhead College student, who is currently studying at York University, is volunteering at a school in Nigeria, where children with disabilities don’t get the same opportunities in life.
She spoke out as the Government this week held the Global Disability Summit in London.
Clemmie, from Slaithwaite, said: “I’m really lucky that the NHS has given me my leg. I can walk, it means I’ve done things like ballet, rugby and I’ve been skydiving.
“But there are no kids with a physical disability at [the school I’m working in here], and it’s likely that I too would not have received an education had I been born here.”
Clemmie is currently volunteering with organisation VSO helping to tackle stigmas against disabilities in developing countries like Nigeria.
She added: “When my team went to the local market, adults and children pointed and stared at my prosthesis and asked what was wrong. This happens occasionally in the UK but it was on a much larger scale here.
“In the UK, I go around on crutches or in a wheelchair all the time, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable using them here.”
Of the estimated one billion disabled people worldwide, it’s thought some 800 million are from developing countries.
“There’s cultural superstition around it and a lack of understanding”, Clemmie added.
“Some people here don’t understand that it’s not a punishment, it’s not because disabled people have done something wrong in a past life, and that it’s nobody’s fault they’re disabled.
“Coming to Nigeria, I’ve realised that had I not been lucky in the lottery of birth, I probably wouldn’t have even gone to school.
“It’s just lucky I was born in the UK.”
