How You Can Help an Iraqi Refugee Living with Cerebral Palsy

Bret and Veronica spoke to Liz Castagnera, caregiver and friend of Yonan Matti, a refugee from Iraq living with cerebral palsy in El Cajon. He's in need of an accessible van, a cause you can donate money to by visiting Donate to Southwest Catastrophic Illness Fund in honor of Yonan Luay Matti. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jona and Mahdi is an Iraqi refugee living with cerebral
palsy and alcoholne and he needs help getting an accessible.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Van and joining us now on the Coco News liveline
is his caregiver and friend, Liz Castingnara. Liz, thank you
so much for joining us on San Diego's Morning News.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Thank you for having me give us a.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Little bit of a background on Yonan Mattie's story.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Okay, so Yonia and his family are all now US citizens,
but they first came to the United States in twenty
fifteen as refugees from Iraq. At that time, there was
still a lot of violence happening in Iraq. He was
for fifteen years old at the time, and he had
actually never ever been to school because of his disability.

(00:48):
Like you mentioned, he has cerebral palsy and his disability
really impacts his body. He's not able to speak or
eat in the traditional ways, but he's actually able to
communicate very effectively using an i Gaze computer that's mounted
to its wheelchair and it sits right in front of him,
and so he communicates in English when he's interacting with

(01:09):
school people and friends, but then switches to Arabic when
communicating at home, and it's really quite remarkable how quickly
and accurately Yo Nan has learned how to communicate in
these two languages using I GA's technology.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
But he needs to get around. This is not something
that's easy for him.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
No, it's not easy for him or his family. He
loves participating in everything he possibly can. He loves going
to school. He attends at cal State found Marcos, which
has a program for students with disabilities called Aspiring Scholars.
He goes there one day a week. He also likes

(01:50):
to go other places. He has numerous medical appointments that
he needs to attend. But the family doesn't own a
wheelchair accessible vehicle. They do rely on others to help
him get around. So that's why we're raising money so
that the family can be a little bit more independent

(02:10):
at taking care of his needs and he would be
able to access everything that he wants to access.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
How old is Jon?

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Jon's twenty three years old right now.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
And so as he communicates and you talk about how
remarkable it is he communicates through the computer and the technology,
can you give us a sense of his personality?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, Yeah, he's a real people person. He loves. I
mean seeing the people that he loves is what makes
him happiest. He likes to laugh and tell jokes. As
I mentioned, he loves going to school and being able
to participate that way using his communications system. His communications
system actually does other things as well, like it will

(02:52):
help him be able to play Xbox games. How he
likes to play What's That Night, Fortnite Fortnite, and he
can also use that computer to create artwork using his eyes,
so the computer does a lot for him.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Liz, we appreciate your taking the time to tell US's story.
We have posted the link on our social media if
anybody wants to help him out. Thank you for joining
us this morning.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Thanks Liz, okay, you're welcome. Thank you for having me
all right.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
That is Liz Castanera, a caregiver and friend of Joon
and Mani who is in a rock refugee living here
in Alkohoen