Special Needs Future Development Centre is looking to expand to accommodate more activities.
Karama Centre is, among other things, a bustling jewellery market. What you don’t expect in this ‘concrete souq’ is a ‘Special Needs Future Development Centre’ (SNF) that has been around for seven years. The placement is incongruous — jewellery stores beside an institute that works with special children. But space in Dubai comes at a premium.
A teacher supervising the special needs students during an arts and crafts session at the centre in Karama. — KT photos by Leslie Pableo
Inside flat no 222, which is the institute on the second floor, the director of SNF, Safia Bari, talks of the need to expand, to move to a bigger space so that they can expand the range of programmes they run. It’s something even the parents of the students want for their children.
Programmes at the centre being conducted now are: Behaviour modification, speech therapy, reading and writing, and house-keeping activities like ironing, sorting shelves and making beds. There’s craft work, too: Card- and key chain-making, besides others. There is also a small gym on the premises. But the place does feels cramped. What the place needs is a move up, infrastructure wise — more space.
The vibe is of a school. You see students with heads bowed down, working away at their given tasks — vocational and pre-vocational tasks. Some look up as you cross them, say hello and smile, and ask you your name.
QUICK FACTS • In 2003, SNF was established as a support group. The development centre that it is today started in 2007 at Karama Centre. • Today, the centre has 38 students, between the ages of 14 and 53, and there is a waiting list of 20 to admit more students. • 19 qualified and certified physiotherapists and trained staff members work at SNF. • The centre functions on a 1:2 specialist to student ratio. • 160 families currently support SNF. • Sponsoring a child at SNF costs about Dh1,200 a month and about Dh15,000 per year. |
There are stories of remarkable achievement. Visually-impaired Ayesha, for instance, in her late 20s, joined the institute in 2007, and has proved she is a quick learner, grouping paper coupons together and folding paper in the way it needs to be done. Ayesha’s sponsorship this year has been taken care of by Holiday Inn.
The parents of students are thrilled with the efforts of SNF. Asma Farooq is the mother of Suhana, 22, who has been at SNF since September 2009. Asma says her daughter used to have speech delay and would utter only single words like “mama” or “papa”, but now she’s progressed to using full sentences. Recently, Suhana pointed out an ad on TV to her mother and said, “Mama, come here! See Horlicks”.
Asma speaks with pride. “She does all her work on her own at home. We didn’t expect her to progress so much,” Asma admits. She has the highest praise for the staff. “They’re fully dedicated … they’ve even taught me to have patience. I used to be so short tempered.”
The student teacher ratio at SNF is 1:2, one specialist for two students.
Sujatha Anandram, mother of a teenaged student at SNF, Vivasvat, says: “The biggest plus of SNF is that they look after children even if they are over 18 years of age, which most schools and institutes here don’t.” Speaking of his progress in the last year and a half that Vivasvat has been at SNF, Sujatha says, her son is ‘more independent’ now. “He wants to take the lead and he walks ahead of me, and he greets people. These may be very small things for some people, but as his mother, it’s a big deal for me.”
“As a parent, I would love to see the students being provided with opportunities to do more … to be able to move into a bigger place…”
The plan at SNF is to incorporate activities like carpentry, screen printing and gardening. But to get these plans off the ground, a larger space is needed, and of course, money and sponsorships. “Three-fourths of our students don’t pay full fees,” says Bari, who has been the driving force behind the initiative for over a decade.
“Autism needs a completely different set up,” she says. “Some of the students … we’ve seen them grow and progress for the last 13 years. We started the institute with four students. Now we have 38, and a waiting list of 20 … but no space.”
“Our aim is to build confidence in our students, and empower them so that at least some can gain employment working at simple office tasks like filing and lamination and that’s what we’re training them to do,” she says. -nivriti@khaleejtimes.com