LIVELY and fun-loving, she’s a little girl who dreams to play alongside her friends.

Toddler Zofia Bichler was found to have cerebral palsy when she was ten months old.

Today the three-year-old’s muscles are so stiff and tight that she cannot walk and play like other children.

An operation in the USA promises to help her take her first steps – and friends and family have been battling to raise the £50,000 that is needed.

But with just over a month to go before the op, only half of the target has been raised.

Now a final push has been launched to raise the rest.

A fundraising fun day and a car wash are planned and an appeal has been made to Daily Echo readers to help.

Fundraiser and family friend Pawel Baran said: “She is a three-year-old and any other child of that age would be running around.

“If we get there and raise the funds for the operation, it will change her life.”

Zofia needs regular exercise to help her muscles plus gruelling physiotherapy six times a week, all of which keeps her away from playing with pals.

When her mum and dad Lukasz and Malgorzata, both 29, from Whiteley in Hampshire, found out about the unique operation in St Louis Children’s Hospital in America, they seized the opportunity.

Lukaz, a lorry driver, said: “We just want her to walk like any other kid.”

The operation, called selective dorsal rhizotomy, is best done while Zofia is a toddler.

“If we leave it any later her condition will worsen”, he said.

The surgery involves cutting off some of the sensory nerve fibres that come from the muscle and enter the spinal cord.