Kevin Hartie

My name is Kevin Hartie, I am 35 years old and live in Essex. I've recently completed a Masters degree in psychology, and was recently offered a place at Birkbeck, University of London to study for a PhD in psychology. For my M.Sc  thesis, I researched the psychological impact of spinal cord injury (SCI) on rugby players. I was interested to see how the injured participants’ cope with the life changing impact of SCI, from their perspective. Although participants’ had and continue to face many challenges, with hard work, strong support and focused goals they managed to find meaning and pleasure from life. For my Ph.D I will continue with this research in greater depth thanks to the generous funding I received from The Matt Hampson Foundation to support me through the duration of the course .

My story will be familiar to many people reading this. About 10 years, at the age of 23 I suffered a SCI playing rugby. I sustained a C4 fracture, and instantly, my life changed forever. The injury was severe, and I spent many weeks on a life-support machine paralysed from the neck down. As time went by, I regained movement, and was strong enough to breathe on my own, and was transferred to a spinal unit. After 6 or 7 months, I returned home to live with my parents, and a life that no longer seem familiar to me. It took time for me to adjust and adapt to my SCI, and I was fortunate to have the support, environment and patience of love ones to do so.

Since my accident I have managed to accomplish many positive things. I now live independently in a house I bought and renovated. I went skiing in Sweden with a charity called Backup, I returned to university and completed an MSc in psychology. Also with Backup, I trained as a mentor, giving me the chance to use my experiences to provide support to individuals with SCI. This is something I find very rewarding. New and exciting experiences are constantly appearing for me, for example, recently, I gave a presentation about mentoring and the work that Backup do, to a packed room, at City Hall in London. With determination and support I’ve rediscovered my place in the world, and look forward to many future opportunities.

Herve Iradukunda

Herve was born in exile and became a refuge by default. His parents moved to South Africa in 1997 and he has lived there ever since as a refugee. Herve was always a good student and was very much involved in sport.

In their quest for a more stable situation and a permanent home country for Herve, his younger brother William and their parents it was with such joy relief and happiness when France granted them permanent residency.

However on 22nd November 2010 just two days before their departure to France a car hit Herve whilst he was playing Football with his friends leaving him paralysed from the neck down. He was moved into an Intensive Care Unit and underwent spinal cord surgery a few days later. He was in hospital for four months before moving to a rehabilitation ward.

Despite the unthinkable the family decided to go ahead with the permanent home country residency opportunity and Herve’s mother and brother left for France. His only support in Groote Schuur Hospital was his father Materne Mwumvaneza who visited everyday sitting by his bed side and attending to his sons needs. This put the family in a terrible situation, the mother and brother in a new country but with a paralysed teenager who needed permanent care and an unemployed father whose time was taken up caring for his son.

Foundation’s Support.
We were made aware of Herve’s situation when Matt received a personal email from Emma Wylie a physio who used to work with Matt when he was in Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Emma had taken a voluntary physio position on the only state-run, dedicated spinal cord injury unit in South Africa and one of her patients was Herve. Matt knew he wanted to do something to help Herve we just needed to work out how best the Foundation could do this.

As luck would have it Chairman of Trustees of the Foundation Roy Jackson had recently visited Cape Town for a friend’s wedding and had met up with Morne du Plessis (Chairman) and Gail Ross (General Manager) of the Chris Burger and Petro Jackson Players Fund (www.playersfund,org.za). Roy immediately contacted Gail who had already heard of Herve’s plight and the wheels were put into motion. Within weeks the Players Fund in South Africa had made their first grant to a non rugby related injury on humanitarian grounds to the fund to reunite Herve and his father with the rest of their family in France. They were also able to encourage other agencies including the French embassy to assist in arranging Herve’s safe passage to Paris. With the final donation of £5000 from the Matt Hampson Foundation there was sufficient funds for Herve and all the required medical personnel and his father to fly to Paris,and this is exactly what they did on Sunday 4th July 2011.

Message from Herve’s Father Materne ‘I don't know even where to start saying thank you not only from me but everyone in the family. We are still overwhelmed by this news. Miracles do happened and God has many ways to resolve problems, for us the Matt Hampson foundation will always be his angels he sent to us. We are extremely humbled by this donation and words can't be enough to convey our gratitude to everyone who made this happened.

We will keep you upto date with news on Herve’s progress when we have it but due to Matt’s quick intervention and a touch of luck the Foundation has played a huge part in reuniting Herve with his family but also probably saving this young man’s life.

Ben Lei'a

Ben was a very promising rugby player with the Marist Club in Samoa. He had recently been selected for the emerging Manu Samoa youth squad. In January 2010, during a training run for an up-coming Marist tour of New Zealand, Ben suffered a horrific neck fracture which left him as a life-long tetraplegic. He has no feeling below his upper chest, and can only move his neck and head. The Samoan Health service is not equipped to take care of a tetraplegic, they have no wheelchair or hospital bed available for him to take home.

He recently had a short time at home, but contracted a severe infection from his catheter insertion and had to return to the hospital. One big danger is bed sores and other infections, with no proper electronic bed for his care, this danger is greatly increased. In the hot climate, once he contracts bed sores, they would be extremely difficult to heal, and can easily become septic. There is no Government or aid money of any kind available for someone in Ben’s severe condition. There is no surgery available at this time that can make any appreciable impact on his condition or aid to take him off-shore for rehabilitation.

Ben is a very deserving young man. He has to fight off pits of despair, yet at the same time remains extremely grateful for any help that is given to him. When he was offered to be brought a radio to listen to, he politely declined, saying that he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. The best way we can support him is by helping him return to his family, and have his family equipped to care for him. Ben’s family and village are extremely poor, even by Samoan standards. Ben is the oldest of 7 children, and his father earns around $80NZ per week. The family needs assistance to provide housing for his care and rehabilitation.

Foundation’s Support
Matt heard about Ben through his good friend Freddie Tuilagi who is involved in the UK Marist Trust which was set up to raise funds for Ben here in the UK. The Tuilagi family have been big supporters of Matt ever since his accident in 2005 and on hearing about the plight of young Ben from Freddie and his brothers we wanted to help. In this instance we felt a financial donation was most appropriate and in February this year with the Foundation just few weeks old we made a donation of £2000 to the UK Marist Trust. The money will be used for Ben’s ongoing care and rehabilitation needs as well as helping with basic living expenses. The Foundation has pledged its ongoing support for Ben and we will keep you up to date on his progress with regular updates on this website.

Henry Fraser

Henry is a very talented teenager who had an accident in 2009 whilst on holiday with his friends. He ran into the sea, dived into the surf and damaged his spinal cord leaving him unable to move his arms and legs.

Henry is a superb athlete with a particular passion for rugby. He was a regular member of Dulwich College 1st XV and has represented the County,

London & South East Division and Saracens Academy. He is still training and still has lots of goals to achieve – just different to the ones he had before.

Foundation’s Support.
Matt visited Henry shortly after his accident and has become good friends with him over the past couple of years. The Saracens Rugby Club have shown fantastic support to Henry since his accident, this is no surprise as there owner Nigel Wray and the Club’s supporters have been so supportive to Matt since his own accident in 2005. The annual Saracens walk4matt www.walk4matt.org team choose to support Henry last year as their chosen charity and it was fantastic to see Henry and his family join us one evening of this year’s walk. Matt has been using a piece of equipment, Easystand's Evolv, for the past couple of years as part of his rehabilitation and physio and he felt the same bit of kit would be useful to Henry. The Cross Trainer was presented to Henry in January this year by members of the Leicester Tigers First team squad at Welford Road.