Limbs For Life is a non profit commmunity empowering and rebuilding the lives of children who have suffered lower limb amputation trauma
Our gratitude for the Picture of Gazal Bakr, taken by Samar Abu Elouf to illustrate Eliza Griswold's article
"The Children Who Lost Limbs In Gaza"
Technology & Innovation
Partnering with communities
The use of modern digital fabrication technology is essential in advancing our provision of prosthetics and services to children with acquired lower limb differences. Digital scanning and additive manufacturing enables accurate reproduction of complex geometries in a fraction of the time it would take using conventional methods and eliminates expensive tooling and workshops enabling faster development cycles with rapid iterative reconstruction and modification leading to greater comfort and performance. Digital prosthetic fabrication reduces waiting times and the number of processes and manual steps required to bridge the gap between the prosthesis and the patient. Digitalisation provides the unique opportunity to adapt and create new configurations to meet physiological limb changes and the personal aesthetic wishes of the children we care for.
By nurturing relationships with like-minded organizations and private individuals, we're able to unlock greater potential and new sources of capital to scale up our work far beyond what traditional funding can do alone.
We liaise with humanitarian aid organisations to enable the most efficient platform to provide lower limb prosthetics to children in areas of conflct. Our non-profit Community Interest Company engages new innovative technologies that provide adapt and accelerate the provision of prosthetic limbs and their components, our mandate for the love we wish to give.
Finance & Investing
To make a lasting impact, we know that we must actively engage and include the communities we are seeking to help. We are continually learning and growing in how we show up as an authentic, ethical partner. We are motivated by our mandate to support and rebuild the lives of children in the provision of limbs that will help restore their confidence, idependence and true divine nature created by God.
A lasting legacy of love
Limbs For Life was established in the memory of Catherine Elizabeth Couchman.
Catherine dedicated her life as a nurse and helped save countless lives, a vocation which became her true sense of identity. After her training at Kingston Hospital in Surrey in 1976 Catherine moved to Plymouth where she worked on the Intensive Care Unit at Freedom Fields Hospital, a place where she felt she could make a difference towards positive patient outcomes. Her love and human compassion continues in the spirit of our work.
Our team
Alan Butler
I spent my youth studying pathology at the Institute of Pathology and Tropical Medicine, RAF Halton, while serving with the Royal Navy. After leaving I qualified in Podiatric Medicine and Surgery. Now retired and in the last chapter of my life I aim to empower, inspire and make a difference to the lives of children with lower limb differences.
Will the world be a better place for us having been here?
We only get one chance in life to find fulfillment, purpose and meaning. The world is not a perfect place, there is no rhyme nor reason for existence other than to help each other on its journey. I believe we can all make a small contribution towards a greater humanity in showing compassion for others.
Mark Couchman
Alan’s background has been working in the voluntary sector of Plymouth since 2010 often in Community Engagement roles. He collects oral history interviews, as a means to capture peoples’ stories and make them part of the historical record. Much of that work has been centred around an LGBTQ+ community archive in Plymouth - which has also informed both his PhD study and also much of his advocacy work as a co-director of the Pride in Plymouth Community Trust.
He is a great believer in the idea that people’s voices need to be heard by everyone to give them a proper place in both our present society and also in our history. People’s wellbeing and sense of being part of the world is directly impacted upon by being able to see themselves in the past and in the present, while also being acknowledged as having a part to play in the future.
The work of Limbs for Life CIC directly empowers a generation of young people, whose lives have been impacted by conflict, to be seen, heard, and be given a future that is a little brighter with increased possibilities opened up for them.
