Restore Lives of 100 Children with Disabilities.

A right to education is a universal right that is applicable to all children everywhere including children with disabilities. Children with disabilities find it challenging to access education in Uganda. First and foremost, the negative attitudes of the family and community are one of the barriers that affect children with disabilities to access education. The community sees them as a curse, misfortune, useless and burden, public shame, witch craft and a disease. These negative perceptions are even in schools where they are bullied by their fellow learners and also teachers don’t give them more time in regards to their learning.

This negative perception of people in families, communities and schools about disability leads to low self-esteem in children with disabilities and thus may affect their learning in schools. This is because when children with disabilities feel that people around them judge them on the basis of who they are, they perform less well in schools and they gradually shrink to low self-confidence and esteem that may lead to dropping out of school. Children with disabilities therefore require substantive psychosocial support to make them understand and accept the fact that they are unique and also accept they are human beings with unique and individual potentials, and that they can participate in learning.

Inaccessibility of the physical environment in schools is still a major challenge e.g. disability-unfriendly classrooms and washrooms where you find narrow doors and buildings without ramps and landmarks to guide visually impaired pupils, communication and information means e.g. Lack of sign language interpreters in schools for the deaf as well as a shortage and unaffordability of assistive and mobility devices for example wheelchairs, crutches, body braces, white cane, visual and hearing aids and many others. For any inclusive education programme for children with disabilities, these special needs services have to be provided to children with disabilities and reasonable accommodation needs to be emphasized in schools to ensure physical accessibility to classrooms.

 We appreciate our wonderful donors for the generous support and our fundraising campaign is still open to support Children with special needs.