SHE is a girl who has one desire in life – to be able to walk for herself.

Born with cerebral palsy, Sophia Banger has already undergone a number of operations in her short life to achieve her dream with thousands being raised to pay for the pioneering surgery under the campaign Sophia’s Footsteps, backed by the Daily Echo.

However, four years on and Sophia has suffered a few set backs and has recently had to undergo more major surgery to enable her to achieve her goal of walking unaided.

Now the community in Chandler’s Ford, where the family live, is rallying support once more to help pay for her gruelling regime of physiotherapy and equipment which is vital to her being able to walk.

A fundraising evening is being held at The Hilt community centre with organisers hoping to raise much needed cash to help pay for Sophia’s ongoing needs.

Sophia, daughter of former Saints player Nicky Banger, flew to America to undergo surgery for her condition spastic diplega in 2012 to relax her muscles and enable her to walk unaided.

Since then she has been determined to achieve her ambition to walk on her own and has even taken part in two Race for Life events in Southampton using a walking frame.

However, since the operation two years ago Sophia has had to endure more surgery and recently underwent several major operations.

Mum Stephanie told the Daily Echo how the recovery from recent operations was tougher than the procedure in America, as her daughter had both hips completely reconstructed and her left leg shortened to equalise it with her right one.

On top of that Sophia has also had flat foot reconstruction surgery on both feet.

Her recovery was progressing but then Sophia began to feel pain in her knee which has meant more examinations and scans to determine the cause of the problem.

And all this while the youngster is beginning a new chapter of her life as she moved up to secondary school at Kings in Winchester earlier this month.

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PICTURED: Hiltingbury Village, Chandlers Ford

“It has been a lot for her to deal with,” said Stephanie, “But in fact school is the thing that really lifts her, she is loving it.

"The frustration is that after all she has been through, she doesn’t feel like she’s made much progress as she is non weight bearing at the moment.

“She has been through so much surgery, which was difficult to recover from and she still finds herself in her wheelchair.

"Our hope is an MRI will show us what is wrong with her knee and then we can sort that and really start to make some progress.

“It is difficult when you have these setbacks, especially when she works so hard on her physio. Hopefully we will get over this latest hurdle as quickly as we can.”

It is her courage and determination that has inspired the Sophia’s Sparkle event at The Hilt on Saturday, September 24.

Guests can enjoy a glass of bubbly on arrival and entertainment by Southampton based band Take Note.

Organised by local mums Nic Lansdown and Mary Vokes, the night also features a raffle with ‘fabulous’ prizes.

In encouraging people to support the event Mary and Nic said: “Sophia has never been able to walk.

"She fights a daily battle to achieve all the simple ‘normal’ tasks that we all take for granted.

“Sophia has had many operations to try to help out and has to get up at 6am for gruelling daily physiotherapy.

“This is a chance to help make a real difference to people’s lives, merely by having a good time yourself.”

Stephanie added: “They didn’t tell us they were organising this until they started promoting it.

"It really is just so amazing that people do this sort of thing to help Sophia achieve her dream, thank you so much.”

Tickets for the evening, which starts at 7.30pm at the centre on Hiltingbury Road, are priced at £15 with multi-buy discounts available.

For more information and to book tickets visit thehilt.org.uk.

l A FUNDRAISING drive to raise cash for a host of new equipment needed to help Sophia is also live. Anyone wishing to make a donation can visit treeofhope.org.uk/sophias-footsteps-equipment-fund to make a donation.