When Illuminée Gahongayire started to teach at Autism Rwanda, she could face challenges of lack of enough skills to cater for children who have autism problem in Rwanda
As the time went on, the school fortunately got some partners who helped in capacity building.
“every year we have two training, we are having some skills, last year we got American trainers who are helping us to increase knowledge and skills to be able to help children with autism, they come after three months and they help us improve after assessing what we do and how we implement the knowledge they gave us. Nowadays many children are starting to say something, we appreciate the support they gave us including materials. Illuminée Gahongayire said
Illuminée Gahongayire teacher in Autism Rwanda
Her dream was to know what is really autism and how to get skilled enough in regard with giving support to children with this problem, I got an experience that children who have this problem struggle to cooperate with other children. I am now happy to see Rwandan children socially included in our community and are catered for.
This year, the school got other sponsors to monitor how children with autism are intellectually developing.
Rosine Kamagaju, one member of Autism Rwanda founders said that they have educated many children since five years. Some of them have joined current schools to study with other children with a common curriculum.
“I came here first in 2010, my special knowledge was autism and I came to train staff who were catering for children with disability. I found autism as unknown thing, but I had to contribute my role as it makes part of my specialization (Trouble Associé), it was not easy to understand what is autism in the beginning, in Rwanda we have many children with such a problem,” Kamagaju said.
According to Word Health Organization, 1 percent of the world population is an autist. In America, 1of 58 children born autist.
“we have many requests of people who want to bring their children but our financial capacity cannot allow that,” she said, adding that it requires patience, love and skills to be able to help the children with autism. We can help more children with this life condition when we have means,”
Autism Rwanda is happy to partner with American people to collaborate and support, through knowledge boosting as Kamagaju noted.
She advises parents to avoid hearting words when speaking to families and individual children who have autism.
She said that autism is characterized by three elements: Failure to communicate, failure to speak, failure to hear. They are not proud to socially collaborate and their behavior can change.
Rosine Kamagaju with Tausha Kutcher kordisch
Kamagaju said that such children have special needs and call for joint efforts to help the children with autism.
Tausha Kutcher kordisch one of Trainer who from USA commended Kamagaju’s efforts and advised her to continue educating the community and be friends with children with autism, “knowing with people with autism is not a strange, we need to begin sharing the message so that people can understand about autism. My message to the community is to tell anybody to embrace people with autism, this is the beginning of something very beautiful here, I will love to see more schools like this in Rwanda, I will love to get more supports here in Rwanda for autism. We need to come together and create a support structure for all of these people,”
The Express News
