It was nearly two years ago that I heard about Alois Letipila, an early childhood Masai teacher-trainer who had suffered severe spinal injuries in a car crash in February 1989. As Co-ordinator of the New South Wales “Contact” project for isolated families (funded by DCS & H) I am also responsible for the Contact Children's Mobile sponsored by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, which also funds Letipila's early childhood education program. Our suggestion to bring Letipila to the spinal unit of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney was generously taken up and financed by the Foundation.