Fi and Eliza

Today was our last day working in the school. Most of the children received their end of school reports, and it was lovely to see them achieve good levels, and be given back their grades. At the end of lesson three one of the boys from my year 11 class was playing the drums on the back of an old dustbin, and all the children were singing and dancing! It just shows that people and children around the world can have absolutely nothing, but can still have the most beautiful happy smiles on their faces. I was nearly in tears as I watched them, all having such a good time on their last day of school! Xx

I know it’s going to be really hard to say goodbye to all the children that we have worked with over the past week at their final party tomorrow, but I’ve really enjoyed it and I’ll never forget my experience.

By Eliza

On Wednesday, I went with some others from the group to spend some time at the Centre in Athidiya for a special needs session run by Catherine, an Occupational Therapist from the UK. Sister Concepta and Mrs. V had taken some members of our group round the community to visit the homes of children with special needs, encouraging them to bring their children along to the centre.

For reasons that are not clear, there is a higher incidence of children with disabilities born into the community at Athidiya and there are few facilities or resources to support them. Four of the families brought their children along to the session, ranging in ages from 10 to 25. None of these young people had any language at all, 3 couldn’t walk unaided and all face day after day lying in darkened rooms with no stimulation to speak of. Catherine has started a toy library based at the Centre and we spent about an hour and a half working with each young person to find out which toys they found most stimulating or exciting. They were then able to take those toys home for the week.

This was a sobering experience which brought home to me the extent to which attitudes to SEN in the UK have really changed over the past 50 years or so – my hope is that these attitudes begin to change here in Sri Lanka too. The mothers and sisters who brought their family members along to the session undoubtedly love them, but there is no education or training available to help them support and stimulate their loved ones. This toy library and the hands-on training and modelling that Catherine and others are providing could be the catalyst for the change that is so needed. I’d love to get together a supply of toys – noisy, bright, shiny, tactile – that we could send out here to add to the collection. Any contributions welcome!!

Fi

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