A Day Care Centre in Kyeradeso
As you may remember we started our Outreach work in the large Nkoranza District with PCC as its base back in 2015.
Of course there is a maximum to the number of special needs children whom we can admit in PCC, while there also is a great demand for good health care and attention for these children and young adults outside our Community.
By way of our Outreach work we are trying to improve the life conditions of all special needs children that live in the many villages in the Nkoranza District. We inform parents about the underlying causes of various disabilities, which is ultimately important. We organize Parent Support Groups and we also make available e.g. medical aids and anti-epileptics to make sure that parents know their benefits so their children will have to suffer less from epileptic attacks eventually.
A very important part of the Outreach programme is the improvement of the economic independency of older children or young adults with special needs by educating them in becoming for example a goat herder or mushroom grower in their own village (after having consulted their parents of course). We offer them a good start by giving them a few goats, sheep, rabbits or enough mushroom seed as a present. It works two ways: these youth will feel useful and they will earn money for their families.
Another aspect of our work in the District is initializing the set up of Day Care Centres in a few villages. Here parents and village elders can join forces – supported by us – to bring (young) special needs children together to take care of or to be taken care of in order to enable most parents to work in e.g. the fields during the day.
It is also a great improvement for the children, because many of them used to sit at home stuck in a room where they would have to spend the whole day in loneliness.
By way of our Outreach work we are trying to improve the life conditions of all special needs children that live in the many villages in the Nkoranza District. We inform parents about the underlying causes of various disabilities, which is ultimately important. We organize Parent Support Groups and we also make available e.g. medical aids and anti-epileptics to make sure that parents know their benefits so their children will have to suffer less from epileptic attacks eventually.
A very important part of the Outreach programme is the improvement of the economic independency of older children or young adults with special needs by educating them in becoming for example a goat herder or mushroom grower in their own village (after having consulted their parents of course). We offer them a good start by giving them a few goats, sheep, rabbits or enough mushroom seed as a present. It works two ways: these youth will feel useful and they will earn money for their families.
Another aspect of our work in the District is initializing the set up of Day Care Centres in a few villages. Here parents and village elders can join forces – supported by us – to bring (young) special needs children together to take care of or to be taken care of in order to enable most parents to work in e.g. the fields during the day.
It is also a great improvement for the children, because many of them used to sit at home stuck in a room where they would have to spend the whole day in loneliness.
It is no wonder that we are very happy with the opening of the first Day Care Centre (DCC) in the Nkoranza District – in the village of Kyeradeso – where 6 children are staying and being cared for daily. It has taken a year before everything was settled with their parents and village elders, but it finally is.
There was a nice surprise for us when we arrived, because the care mother over here appeared to be the mother of Princess and Ernest. We know this mother and her two special needs children because they visited PCC a few times a week for physiotherapy in 2015 and 2016.
It is good to see how proud these villagers are of their own DCC and of course we are very proud of these people!
Admittedly, DCC in Kyeradeso is a very basic centre; there is still room for much improvement (and with our help much will improve). This is just the beginning: much more is to come.
Ultimately each long march starts off with a first step and it is really wonderful that this first step may serve as an example to other villages.
We sincerely hope that Kyeradeso’s DCC’s success will prove to be infectious and other facilities like this will be set up elsewhere in and outside the Nkoranza District in the interest of all those special needs children who are living without any form of specialized care.
Thus PCC is enthusiastically spreading its wings outside the Community firmly determined of the necessity of this work!