Good Shepherd Academy boosts education of children with mental and physical disabilities

By Elias Hakizimana.

The Good Shepherd Academy is a nursery founded by Love with Actions for children with mental disabilities; the school is located at the organization’s headquarters in Bumbogo Sector, Gasabo District.

The school was incepted after Love With Actions realized that children with mental disabilities cannot go to current schools due to a number of reasons including lack of knowledge of teachers who have not been trained to provide special education to these children, infrastructure toilets, chairs, classrooms, playgrounds make it difficult for children with disabilities, especially mentally and physically.

Gilbert Kubwimana, Executive Director and Founder of Love with Actions, a charity that advocates and helps children with disabilities, says the school was launched as an Early Child Development Center ECD ) to support the government’s program to promote basic and inclusive education.

“The children we have in this ECD are current beneficiaries of Love With Actions program, we plan to expand the initiative and put them in age groups and disability status because we children  who cannot speak at all, we have children who speak very little and their disabilities include Autism, Celebral palsy, and down syndrome.”Kubwimana says.

Kubwimana says these children have already developed their comprehension and adaptation to the program’s disciplines because the ECD helps them in terms of treatment, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation, playing and gaming as well as learning.

“Some of these kids use wheelchairs, there are chairs they can’t sit on, there are toilets they can’t use, they can’t climb stairs, but what we’ve seen is that every child is capable, as disability is not inability.”

Some of the lessons taught include distinguishing colors, playing, identifying numbers and letters in Kinyarwanda and English, and getting to know each other even though many do not speak.

Kubwimana appreciates the government’s role in the process of changing community livelihoods and urges the local authorities to stay close to them and help them to provide these children with prosthetic limbs.

Ernestine Uwambaye, Teacher at Good Shepherd Academy who started in January 2021, says the job of teaching these children is not an easy task, but a passion because children are of different ages and different disabilities.

“Now there is a significant improvement because at the beginning I had a bit of fear because I found it a  difficult task, but with my passion to teach, I helped them to adapt quickly, and now they are able to learn and they follow; others learn from their peers.”

Uwambaye says the children have now reached an exciting stage.

She advises any parent with a child with a disability not to isolate him or her and to prevent him or her from going to school.

Love with actions is an organization that helps and advocates for children with disabilities and also helps their families to change attitudes and health in general. The organization started operations in Rwanda in 2016, and today cares for about 40 children.