Moshi deals with autism in children head-on

In Tanzania for instance, government and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in collaboration with some community based organizations (CBOs) have played a big role on the awareness on the importance of avoiding isolation and discrimination against the ‘Special groups’ in the community for the sustainable socio-economic growth in the country.

Gabriella Children Rehabilitation Centre (GCRC), is among many non-governmental organizations, that have played a big role in the country in dealing with the children and youth with problem of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).

Speaking with this paper in an exclusive interviews in her office when the Deputy Minister in prime Minister’s Office responsible for the people with Disabilities Dr. Abdallah Possi visited the centre recently, the Executive Director of GCRC Brenda Shuma who is an Occupational Therapist by n explained that, Autism is a developmental disability that appears in children at the age of three.

“It impacts the child's ability to communicate and interact with others in society and ADHD is a situation where children and youth’s brain is active above normal,” she further explained.

She added that, for her it has been a privilege to work with children and youth with disability in creating independence in them by giving them skills which they could use to become productive.

“It has been a journey teaching skills like cooking, creating crafts that could compete in the market, and together with gardening and livestock keeping, as we started with our first group of youth in January last year,” she explained during the interviews.

According to Shuma, the children and youth with disabilities that she has worked with have have now reached a stage where they can produce and are now being equipped on how to be entrepreneurs.

“Since 2014, GCRC has assisted them start their own projects at their home places and we feel happy to see them reach this stage and looking forward for this new years endeavour,” she pointed out.

Shuma further explained that, Gabriella, her institution has created awareness on autism and brain disabilities to community so that they can take them to the special centres or clinics for rehabilitation instead of hiding them in their houses.

“We are reaching more children, families and their communities. The change in their lives serve as advocacy to the larger community where more children with disability who were being hidden are now brought forward after seeing the change in the ones attending our services.

With hard work and determination we can keep the ball rolling,” she added.Enlightening some activities that her organization have achieved in the 2015/16, Brenda Shuma recalls

“The year 2015 was a very remarkable year for the Gabriella Center as we made a lot of progress and changes in our activities. We had an increased number of children and we exceed our target on service delivery.”

According to her, there has been some innovation on sustainability mechanism for our center; we manage to start livestock keeping for training as well as for sustaining the center’s income.

“We have continued to find means and ways to improve our income so that we can deliver good services while continue to hosting a unique and only clinic for diagnosis of children with autism,” she added.

According to her, they have continued receiving supports and coachingsfrom their well wishers last year to develop the five year Strategic Plan (2014 to2019) and manage to extend our charity service delivery to the new areas as well as extending their outreach to the new areas including Karatu district in Arusha region and Rombo district in Kilimanjaro region.

According to Ms. Shuma, her organization has also manage to improve their children’s record keeping (particularly with Autism) by installing software which will easy the work at the center.

“Our children (with Autism) participated in different social events which aimed at giving them equal opportunities as well as inclusion to the community. The social activities include visiting National Parks and participating in 2016 Kili Marathon among many others.

For his part, the Deputy Minister of state in Prime Minister’s office-People with Disabilities Dr. Abdallah Possi recommended the role played by the Gabriella Children’s Rehabilitation centre by supporting people with disabilities particularly those with learning disabilities and autism, by providing them with special training helps them to become autonomous and other humanitarian supports.

“You are doing a very laudable work to the people with disabilities particularly those with autism and learning disabilities, my advice to you is to introduce centres like this in other parts of the country so that you can help more and more Tanzanians with disabilities.” the Minister explained.

However, the Minister also called them to work in collaboration with the government and other well wishers to provide more equipments for the special needy people in the country as they are facing acute shortage of learning tools and materials among many others.

“My appeal to my fellow Tanzanians is to support people with disabilities instead of discriminating or abandoning them as they can become productive like anybody….” Dr. Possi insisted.

Gabriella Children Rehabilitation Centre (GCRC) is charity non-government organization (NGO) located at Sambarai-Kibosho, in Moshi Rural district, Kilimanjaro region. Thorganization started in 2009 and registered to work all over Tanzania Mainland.

The charity organization started mainly in response to the need of children with learning disabilities and Autism. The reason for focusing in this group is because in all types of disability this is most neglected group in the area of service delivery.

So Gabriella has a mission of ensuring children with disability to be identified early, properly assessed and given early and quality intervention and finally to become valued member of community.

Gabriella is dedicated in working with parents, teachers, health workers and social welfare officer to ensure that quality care is provided to children with disability.

The centre consist of integrated school program for children with and without disability, intensive therapeutic intervention, vocational skills training and outreach activities .also Gabriella work and network with other stakeholders in organizing and running community awareness meeting.

The organization provides several charity services including; intensive therapy week where they do offer intensive therapeutic intervention. The weeks are intended for both parent and child.

The team at Gabriella centre aims at maximizing opportunity of working with caregivers to enrich their knowledge about how to handle the children at home, information about disability, nutrition for their children, child rights, HIV AIDS among many others.

The centre has continued to keep the good standard of children receiving therapy and provides weekly therapy service for maximum of 10 children with their caregivers to ensure the service becomes really intensive and beneficial to the target group.