Sun of hope shines over the lives of the PwDs in Hajjah

Sun of hope shines over the lives of the PwDs in Hajjah

Fatima's hope

The parents of the 11-year-old girl, Fatima, tried to enroll her in school. However, Fatima suffers from severe hearing impairment. For one and a half years, Fatima kept going to school and returning home without having any improvement in her education. Her parents felt so desperate that they were forced to draw her from school.

That misfortune took place last year. But, where Fatima is today! And how we find her!

She is now enrolled at Haroun Al-Rasheed School (in Hajjah City) and she studies with the help of teachers who received adequate training to deal professionally with Fatima and other similar cases––different types and degrees of disability.

So, today we find the educational level of Fatima is improving; she is gaining new knowledge and skills for communication with her community. We can easily notice how Fatima finds great pleasure as she studies in the classroom using the various aids and games in the Resources Room.

Fatima's parents and teachers expect a bright future for her, especially they see her having more than one talent such as painting and decoration, which are expected to develop further under continuous follow-up and care by her parents, teachers and community.

Ibtisam Mubarak

Resources Room Specialist, Haroun Al-Rasheed School

Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR)

Persons with disabilities in the city of Abs (Abs District, Hajjah governorate) have always been looked at as incapable to do any activity in the community. To change this view, the CBR Committee has played a major role to raise awareness among community members and introduce the perception that such people have the right to lead a decent life like any other members of the community. They have the right to education and other services.

The SFD has been the founder of the community-based rehabilitation in Yemen. The CBR committee was established from within the community itself through free and direct elections. The SFD then trained the committee on the managerial, financial and accounting aspects as well as on disability and CBR concepts. It provided the committee's premises with all furniture and equipment necessary for its work. A field survey was also carried out to assess the real number of people with disabilities in the city. The survey's findings revealed unexpected numbers of such people, as there were cases hidden in their homes, about whom none knew anything. The findings stated that there have been 661 people with disabilities (227 of them under the age of 18 years). Based on the survey, we embarked on assisting these people. .

Thereafter, people with disabilities in the city became at the center of attention and care and they began to assume their real role as active individuals in the community.

Hadi Ibrahim Hakami

Inclusive Education: Reality and Ambition

Hajjah governorate had lacked the most basic types of activities related to inclusive education; even officials of some of the governorate's Education Office were not fully aware of the concept of inclusive education––not to mention its importance and functions.

This was before the intervention of the SFD.

After the SFD had supported the activities of Inclusive Education Department (IED), such type of education became really inexistent. The IED initiated actual work in the field, expanding its activities to 12 schools, including five supported by the SFD. An institutional support document was signed, according to which the SFD helps IED keep up with the successes made by similar departments in other governorates.

SFD's efforts to expand and spread education, in general, among children with disabilities and serious endeavors to undertake initiatives towards integrating them into the public schools help change the views of these children's parents about the educational future of their children.

The various types of support provided by the SFD to the IED include accurate database on people with disabilities residing in the different areas around the inclusive education schools of Hajjah district. The database offers a key reference for setting plans and other activities for the IED and other relevant agencies.

The IED is ambitious that groups with special needs in the area get their right to education, and the community appreciates their needs and understands how to communicate with them as a segment of the society having rights in all aspects of life.

Nabilah Hussein Al-Moghnaj