Was incredibly busy launching the Break Autism Break Discrimination FB page and Cause page.
Lebanese Armenian schools to this date are denying access to education to children with high functioning autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other learning differences. Our Facebook page promotes education and campaigns for raising awareness on the matter.
Its target audience are primarily the parents of these children, the schools and associated professionals and the local Armenian Community leaders in Lebanon.
TILL NOW
- Learning differences are perceived from stereotypical point of view and are thought to be as mental disorders by the wider community.
- The segragated system of community's political party oriented institutions do not carry on to establishing viable standards for equal access to education for such Armenian children because
- there are no statistics available on the number of cases among the children of Lebanese Armenian community
- the parents are not outspoken about the rejections they get from every Armenian school they approach
- the media does not cover investigative reports on cases of unprofessional denial - e.g. denial without full educational evaluation of the child's academic potential.
- they decline from employing special needs education professionals at schools, which are under heavy sponsorship and control of the leading two Armenian political parties.
- of the utter lack of democratic approach to providing public awareness on essential necessity of diversity at Armenian schools and hence, zero efforts thus far to developing, testing and applying special needs integration programs into mainstream Lebanese Armenian schools.
- because every child denied is an Armenian child who is denied his/her right to Armenian education and parents have to resort to placing them in non-Armenian schools, who albeit well prepared, cannot cater to the intergenerational transfer of Armenian educational values, including language and history.
- because these institutions usually claim they're sitting on a tight budget and cannot commit. Although, this may hardly be the case for myself and my husband run a foundation whereby we proposed to finance four special needs pupils' tuitions once the Armenian school would agree to launch an educational program. The answer to us was "NO!"
- because when talking to Women's Associations who run social-educational tasks and are venues for fundraisers, albeit at first positive in their reaction, they make a clear message that talking of Autism, ADHD, DYslexia etc. won't have people reaching their pockets. It's too complicated compared to the usual cooking and nutrition oriented classes where they learn to line marengues onto a pyramid of "light" chocolate mousse or how to roll rice and raw fish into sushi.
- because Diaspora Institutes apply the same top-to-down method to every community matter, without using political and socio-demographic tools for statistics to evaluate what the public awareness on the matter is, what are the best methods admissible by the very same public who votes for them to bringing an integrated system.
- because there is a beaurocratic system large at work, whereby people play on gaining favouritism for years, so when a "relevant position" comes up, they're the first in the line to get it, whether they're professional or not. And special needs integration program is a "position" like that. This creates a distrust amongst the community of professionals and specialists, who hesitate submitting ideas and projects to the leadership's review for the fear of getting robbed off their academic work to the benefit of unprofessional, unelected, self-appointed beaurocrat, who will at the end NOT deliver results.
FROM NOW ON
- BABD has launched a CAUSE page on the Facebook, which you can reach at the following link - http://www.causes.com/causes/539804/about?m=96bfb580
- You can make your voice heard by simply clicking to support the Cause. Additional features include Donations and Sharing stories. If you know anyone whose child has been denied to attend an Armenian schools because of their learning difference, please write their story, changing the names of the people involved, ask them to participate directly, or write privately.
- Even though, I've had dozens of meetings with community heads, editors, Womens' Associations and other initiative, I'll relaunch a line of meetings and interviews.
- Every single such meeting and interview will be reported in detail on this page as to get to know who does what on this matter.
STAY TUNED AND LEAVE YOUR FEEDBACK! EVERY OPINION COUNTS.
DISCLAIMER: BABD will act in its full capacity against any attempt of plagiarism or infringement of copyright (for this, too, is yet another method the institutions use to pre-kill a project).
