Children with disabilities

Children with disabilities will have an opportunity to go to a regular school starting from September. This project will be implemented in Minsk by the Ministry of Health. However this project is an achievement of representatives of the third sector, Youth NGO “Otrkovenije”.

A Minsk based civic organization the “Otrkovenije” was founded in 2003. An initiative group of parents joined together to represent interests of families, raising children with serious damages of the central nervous system and orthopedic disorders. Such families face lots of difficulties and the major one among them is how to integrate their child into society.

“When it all started, everyone had the same problem, our children were sitting at home and they lacked communication with other children of the same age and did not have an opportunity to go to school with them. All they had was their family and walls around them…”, says the Director of the NGO “Otkrovenije”, Svetlana Biakova-Mikutel.

Though being active only for a few years, the “Otkrovenije” managed to establish contacts with both state bodies and foreign charity organisations.

All together in the name of children

The “Otkrovenije” initiated setting up special classes for children with cerebral palsy at primary school yet in 2003. A Centre for correctional and developing education and rehabilitation of the Centralny District of Minsk organized a barrier-free environment for handicapped children and purchased special purpose school furniture. With the assistance of the Swiss Office for Cooperation in Belarus, a sports gym was equipped for individual classes for children with cerebral palsy. Using sponsors’ assistance, the Centre could hire two trainers to work with such children. What has been done at a primary school level was a pilot project aiming at identifying the needs of children and creating proper environment so that they could be integrated into ‘regular’ children’s groups. However that was only a primary school. After graduation, children returned back to their apartments.

“The Minsk Educational Department of the Ministry of Education finally heard us and made certain moves towards. Starting from September 2008, 9 schools in Minsk will be equipped with barrier-free environment and integrated classes, where both, children with disabilities and healthy children will be studying”, says Svetlana. “This is not the only successful project of ours, jointly implemented with the authorities. This March an Informational and Educational Centre for pre-professional training “Otkryty Mir” opened, which united all the previously created by the NGO “Otkrovenije” clubs and studios, where children with orthopedic disabilities would study computer technologies, languages, digital printing, editing, design. The Centre also has a theatre studio, art-studio and a guest house”, said Svetlana.

We need to learn foreign experience

Belarusian officials and experts sometimes lack certain knowledge and experience in order to solve issue of the disabled children efficiently and correctly. Initially, the “Otkrovenije” also lacked experience. The NGO managed to build up partner relations with an integration service of the German city Kiel and together with representatives of the Ministry of Health visited their seminars and trainings for partners.

A new, starting project of the NGO is called “Family circles”. It is a special form of integration of children into society, existing in Sweden, when both children and adults meet and educate each other about what they know, discuss generation differences and communicate. The idea came from their Swedish partners Grunden association и Studieforbundet Vuxenskolan. The latter shared their experience and held a series of consultations in Belarus. Today the “Otkrovenije” established firm connections with their Swedish and German partners and they have plans to organize foreign seminars and trainings.

The only issue still remains unresolved, namely the lack of resources. The state is not always capable to provide financial support for what disable children really need. All the projects of the NGO “Otkrovenije” were implemented using charity donations and membership fees exceptionally and now they strongly hope for the assistance of their foreign friends…

Olga Rumm