inserting a carousel directly into index.php

As the title suggests I want to hack my index.php by inserting code for a user-friendly carousel plugin.

The user wants to be easily able to choose which photos to include in the carousel by uploading them herself, she doesn’t want a carousel that randomly picks post thumbnails or photos from posts or whatever.

here is the homepage, you will notice an area of white space where i intend the carousel to go: handinhand.ie

Could anyone suggest a suitable plugin?
And then do i simply add code to the index.php above the div I want to put it beside or what?

I’m new to both php and html but i am not afraid to give it a shot, i got backed up files if anything goes wrong