‘We’re all different:’ 6-year-old thanks War Amps with big donation
Posted August 23, 2020 5:10 pm.
Last Updated August 23, 2020 5:14 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MONTREAL (CITYNEWS) – Nikan Nassiraei does not know what he wants to be when he grows up.
“An engineer, a designer, a welder, an archeologist,” said the Montreal boy full of life and ambition. He has time to decide though – he’s only six years old.
One thing Nassiraei knows for sure: he wants to give back to an organization that’s given him so much already. And that’s exactly what he’s doing.
Nassiraei was born with part of his right arm missing and he has been paired up with War Amps since birth. The six-year-old feels like it’s his turn to lend a helping hand.
“With the Shriners hospital, they introduced us to War Amps,” said the boy’s mother, Mehrnoosh Movahed. “Nikan was a one-month-old. We called the War Amps. They were so amazing, so supportive. Since then, Nikan is part of the War Amps family.
“War Amps is a huge support for us. Someone comes to him at the park and says, ‘what happened to your arm?’ And Nikan says, ‘it’s okay, I was born like that and we’re all different.’”
War Amps is a not-for-profit charitable organization helping to improve the lives of Canadian amputees.
“One of the biggest support I can say is the financial support that we had with Nikan’s ‘helper hand’,” said Movahed. “All of Nikan’s recreative prostheses are not supported by insurance or government, it is all supported by War Amps.
“For Nikan, they’re kids so they use it two or three years, then they grow out of it. So they have to get a new one. They’re not that cheap, starting from $6,000 or $7,000. With the myoelectric one, it’s going to $20K, $30K.”
That’s where the idea of giving back came into play. Nassiraei and his family recently made a $1,700 donation to War Amps. They raised the funds by selling some of the boy’s artwork at a Canada Day event in Côte Saint-Luc last year.
And when he’s not raising funds for charity, the six-year-old is spending time outside, either riding his bike or swimming in the pool.
“I like swimming a lot because usually when my dad says ‘swimming,’ I have a very good feeling,” said Nassiraei. “And I just put it on and we go fast there, and I swim and I come back and we go home.”
