Paul Harrison joined the AbleChildAfrica Board of Trustees in 2014. Paul's professional career spans over fifteen years in the global investment management business, leading teams of both investment managers as well as distribution professionals. 

 

Clare Adam joined AbleChildAfrica as a trustee in May 2013. After a visit to our partners in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in September 2014, Clare left the City to join the Legal team at Save the Children UK. 

 

"Paul and I visited the African partners of AbleChildAfrica in September. We have both recently joined the Board of Trustees of AbleChildAfrica, and were really interested to see first hand the impact of AbleChildAfrica's work on the ground. When we discovered we were each planning a self-funded visit to meet the African partners this autumn, we decided to combine our plans and visit the partners together. The trip took us to USDC in Uganda, ANDY and Little Rock in Kenya, and CST in Tanzania. It turned out to be a truly inspiring journey. Over the next few months, we'll be sharing our experiences in this newsletter, starting this month with our visit to USDC.

 

We were particularly thrilled to be visiting USDC - the Ugandan Society for Disabled Children - in our 30th anniversary year, since this was where it all started. Having met the staff team in Kampala we made the 6-hour drive north to Lira, one of the districts where AbleChildAfrica and USDC are currently delivering a new inclusive education project together, funded by DFID.  The journey was shared with a live chicken and 5 pineapples in the boot - a whole new approach to takeaway dinners!

The project currently covers 9 schools, and supports teachers to deliver, and children to learn, in an inclusive educational environment.  Crucially, it also aims to identify and include disabled children who aren't in school, by developing students' awareness and understanding of disability so they can identify disabled children in their communities who are excluded. Sadly negative perceptions of disability persist, and some families keep their disabled children at home to hide what they see as family shame.  When students identify such children, the head teacher can visit the home of the disabled child, talk to the parents, discuss the child's needs and invite him or her to come to school. In the first year of the project alone, enrolment of disabled children has increased in all the schools we visited, by 300% in one case.

With more understanding and less fear, children who were once left isolated in the playground and called unkind names now learn and play together with all classmates, and name-calling is replaced by acts of kindness. As we chatted with teachers near to the water-pump at one of the schools, a blind student came to get a drink. One of his classmates saw him, ran across the field towards him, and gently took his hand to guide him back to class. 

The confidence gained by the children in these schools is also changing attitudes to disability in other schools nearby.  Each week a student from a different local school leads prayers at a joint school assembly. Esther, a blind girl aged 7 from Ngetta school, had read the prayers the week before our visit. Her teacher told us how she had stumbled walking up the aisle to read the prayers, and children from the other schools had laughed at her. But she had spoken with such a commanding voice, so full of dignity and clarity, that the laughter was silenced. And when she walked back to her place, the children gave her nothing but respect.

 

Please check back next month for stories of the impact of AbleChildAfrica's work in Kenya."

 

Jane and Lauren are travelling to Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya this month to visit our partners. They are currently in Kampala visiting USDC. It is Lauren's first trip to visit the partners and she is really enjoying meeting the team!

Stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter for daily updates on their trip!