Open day highlights disability services

It’s Disabilities Awareness Week and today an open house was held at the Belize City Lions Clinic. News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
The open day was the combined effort of CARE-Belize, B.C.V.I., and the Special Education Unit. And while the main idea was to increase awareness of the services these and other organisations provide to persons with special needs, Rehabilitation Officer for CARE-Belize, Roxanne Jones, says it?s also an opportunity to network.

Roxanne Jones, Rehabilitation Field Officer, CARE-Belize
?Today is not only to make known what?s available, but for us different organisations to collaborate with each other, you know to kinda get update on what?s available ourselves.?

And it seems that anybody that had anything to do with disabled persons were present.

Roxanne Jones
?We have the Y.W.C.A., they have courses that young women with special needs go into at their school. We have National Council for Families and Children, we have Belize Council for the Visually Impaired, we have Stella Maris, the Special Education Unit has a booth, we have Karl Heusner here, they have their physical Therapy and respiratory therapy department here.?

And the list goes on. For three year old CARE-Belize, the focus is to provide children from birth to six years old with physical therapy to improve their quality of life.

Roxanne Jones
?That we go in the homes and we teach the families what are some therapies or exercises that you can do in the home with your children. How to help them get integrated into society, maybe at the parks, play around in the neighbourhoods with the children, get into schools, some of the children can get into schools, regular schools also, so we?re there to educate also.?

Part of that education includes teaching families who may not be able to afford costly equipment, how to make low-budget versions.

At the B.C.V.I. booth, students were getting to know Braille and the abacus.

Liza Williams, Rehabilitation Field Officer, B.C.V.I.
?We have a slate and stylus and an abacus that the visually impaired children use. The abacus here is what they use to do multiplication and all their addition on it. The slate and stylus is what they do to write their information on.?

According to Rehabilitation Field Officer for the Council, Liza Williams, there are approximately two thousand visually impaired persons throughout the country and B.C.V.I. visits schools and homes, teaching parents and children how to use the tools.

Liza Williams
?We?ll take the Braille to them from an early age and they need to practice the Braille, so that they can be good on the Braille. But it?s something that they to need practice, it?s not a one-day thing that they will learn.?

Disability Awareness Week is being held under the theme: Inclusion …. Embracing differences, uniting strengths.

Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

Disability Awareness Week activities continue with the finger spelling bee on Thursday, a parade on Friday, and the Special Olympics on Saturday.