By the foot of Kilimanjaro mountain

Several of the children with disabilities, and in particular the children with intellectual disabilities, are purposely held back and discriminated against, due to, for example, ideas about poor potential and abilities, lack of knowledge about rights and local beliefs about disabilities.

Reward is very much focusing on the children with intellectual disabilities. When he was on exhange in Norway in 2019, he wrote on this blog that he wanted to help the children with intellectual disabilities who are hidden away, so that they can have the education in accordance with their rights. After finshing the education at Patandi Teachers collage, he really started to reach for this aim. On his own initiative, and in collaboration with the headteacher and District officer of Special Needs Education (SNE), he wanted to establish a class for children with intellectual disability, even though there were none such children at Singachini.

To find the children with intellectual disabilities and to make them come to school, Reward visited families in the village and talked to parents about children’s rights to go to school and about his competence as a specialized teacher. Several of the parents decided to send their children to school because of this. Information about that Singachini has a teacher who has the competence to teach children with intellectual disability are spreading around.

Some of the children in the class has switched from another school, now there are nine children in the class, and there are still more to come. The same day as we visited Reward, a girl came there for her first day at the school.  The girl and her father had just moved to the area in order for her to receive proper teaching.  

There is a lack of teachers in Tanzania who have knowledge about disabilities, about CRC and CRPD and competence or capacity to meet the children’s needs . At the same time, the few existing specialized teachers in Tanzania are experiencing that it is difficult to get employment as specialized teachers. To compensate on the lack of knowledge at Singachini, Reward also teaches some of his colleagues in how to assist students with intellectual disabilities. In this way, they build more competence, to meet the needs of the pupils. Thank you, Reward, for your dedication to the children who have an intellectual disability, and for making our visit at Singachini an interesting and eventful day.