Ignite possibilities
Our Story
James Getengah knows this all too well. At the strike of 4.pm on a warm and sunny afternoon of November 13th in the year 2013, his family welcomed baby Tatianah with celebration and there was optimism as to the person she would ultimately become when grew up.
Their joy turned to worry when Tatianah’s growth and developmental milestones were not as expected. She could not respond to sound, she swallowed food whole without chewing, was not responding to pain stimuli when falling or from cuts and her speech was not developing among other challenges. This worry led James to seek medical attention for baby Tatianah.
The initial diagnosis was deafness. This led them to undertake numerous hospital visits in Kisii County and later a referral to Gertrude’s Hospital was made where she was diagnosed with autism. Tatianah was booked for therapy every fortnight at Gertrude’s Hospital in Nairobi. This proved very costly.
The financial and physical strain to the family quickly became unbearable – more so to a three year old child. This necessitated him to seek a local solution within Kisii County at the level 5 hospital. The facilities at the level 5 hospital were not comprehensive to cater for the full spectrum of needs that an autistic child such as Tatianah had.
He opted to team up with other parents that were facing the same challenge to set up a facility to cater for the
needs of their autistic children – Dazzling Center for Autism. It quickly became very clear, that the biggest hurdle they would have to overcome, was the cultural misconception around autism.
Parents hid their autistic children from the public that would shun them as bewitched. This led men to abandon their families due to this misconception, leaving their wives to fend for the family and contend with an even tougher burden of catering for an autistic child “If I died today, my prayer is that I die with my daughter because I cannot see her surviving and thriving on her own.” These were James’ words to echo the fear of every parent with an autistic child.
James
CEO & Founder Dazzling Center For Autism
- Our vision
To inspire a world of limitless possibilities where children with special needs survive and thrive on their own.
- our mission
To create awareness and build supportive networks
for children with special needs to thrive through life
skills development and individualized learning.
Our Objectives
To create awareness on neurological conditions within the community to enhance understanding and acceptance of children with special needs: Ignorance associated with Children with special needs creates stigmatization, discrimination, child abandonment and family breakdown. These factors limit any support and care that a child with special need requires to live.
To identify and nurture untapped skills and talent: Children with special needs have proven to have extremely unique abilities that require special approaches to identify and nurture these gifts and talents. Currently, society lacks adequate capacity to do exactly that.
To build human, technical and infrastructural capacity for effective management of children with special needs at facility level: Shortage of adequately trained personnel in speech pathology, occupational therapy, behavioral psychology and physiotherapy limits the growth and development of children with special needs. Learning for children with special needs require prepared environments, specialized teaching aids and therapeutic equipment. Without these, their learning process is impaired and in worse circumstances, completely stunted.
To Lobby and Advocate for changes and enactment of relevant policies and regulations: Neurological conditions such as Autism, ADHD, Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome and learning disabilities are not recognized and supported at policy and regulatory levels both at the county and country level. As a result, there is no government support and limited awareness leading to mis/missed diagnosis of the conditions.
Dazzling Center opens its doors
Dazzling opened its doors in March 2018 after its members came to the realization that there was no appropriate institution in the region that was well equipped to handle children with autism.
The First 3 Students arrive – April 2018
The center opened its doors with: three autistic students, one special needs teacher, a part time speech pathologist and Occupational therapist. At the moment, we have five students (four dropped out due to various challenges) attended to by a special needs teacher, one cook, full time occupational therapist and part time speech pathologist
Awareness and sensitization
In 2018, we created awareness by walking around Kisii county meeting the locals and sensitizing them about the condition. We held various training at the center educating new parents on how to handle children with special needs.
In April 2019, we held a county wide complain dubbed 1,000km Cycle for Autism. It involved one of the parents cycling for 1,000km through 15 counties in 18days meeting parents, medics, and county governments and sensitizing about the condition.
Equipment of the center
The center started from a very humble beginning with little learning and therapeutic materials. Over time, it has managed to get one trampoline, one bike, two therapeutic balls and most important, received book donations from Maktaba Mashiani who partnered with Moran Publishers.
We equally got a water tank from CPF. Despite such progress, we are miles away from becoming a fully Montessori system that we strive to be.
In addition, recently we got a donation of Kshs. 100,000 from the National Council of Persons with Disabilities. We used the funds to make chairs and tables, paint the center, buy some musical instruments and construct an art area for the kids.
Society Acceptance
Due to the awareness and sensitization, the center enjoys a supportive society that has accepted children with special needs. Although the discrimination and stigmatization has reduced, much needs to be done especially in the rural areas
Children Progress
Over time, the children at the center have greatly improved in all aspects including and not limited to behaviour, social skills & interaction, speech development, skills of daily living and language and arithmetic usage. For instance, the center is considering integrating one of its one learners into the mainstream learning system as she has passed the threshold the center has set. However, the center will continue to monitor and support the child while at the mainstream
Plans for the Year 2021
Adopt the Montessori learning system:
to enhance personalized learning for children with special needs within Kisii County. This will also enable us to take in normal children which will have two impacts; first it will increase our sustainability by allowing us to take in more children; secondly support ourintegration agenda.
Pursue Integration of Kids special needs with normal kids.
Apart from creating a learning environment for all children. We will also pursue linkages with other schools and technical institutions so that our special children can advance their learning and skills development.
Pursue Awareness within institutions.
Parents with children with special needs earn a living by working in organizations either as employees or as business owners. Our approach is to take the awareness message to work places because it is difficult for working people to take time off work to attend public awareness meetings.
Have monthly care givers support meetings;
To enhance awareness, we plan to have monthly support group meetings for caregivers. This will also serve as a networking forum for caregivers to exchange ideas and information.