Transforming the lives of disadvantaged children and young people in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.
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Speranta (Chisinau, Moldova)
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Despite the Moldovan government setting goals to secure equal opportunities for disabled people, including opportunities in education, delivery fell far short of intention and children living with disabilities continued to be of unequal status in society. With the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) funding, Speranta’s goal is to achieve educational inclusion and to increase the number of disabled children at school.
It is fair to say that society in general is not overtly discriminative against those with disabilities. Most of the population are simply not exposed to the problem, as for many years disabled people existed in a “parallel world”, out of sight of the vast majority of the population. There is, however, widespread discrimination in institutions, especially those in the educational and social care systems. It is Speranta’s priority to challenge this by bringing children out of their isolated environment and into mainstream education.
Already more than 200 children are attending 41 different mainstream educational institutions. 120 teachers have been trained since the start of the programme.
As a result of our initiative a substantial number of disabled children receive an education and are socially included. With their children in school, parents have the opportunity to seek employment, and can avoid the isolation that constant care creates. For some families, especially those in single parent households, this has been a crucial breakthrough in helping to break the cycle of poverty and isolation and even more important is that this will form the basis from which more people will be able to transform their lives.
For a profile on the country we suggest the BBC website on Moldova
Current Services
Speranta provides rehabilitative treatment and healthcare for children living with disabilities, particularly cerebral palsy and epilepsy and gives extensive training to parents in specialist techniques that will help their child between appointments. Core Services include:
These are broken down as follows:
Within the Day Centre:
consultation reviews
parents club providing group support
multi-functional rehabilitation
physiotherapy
speech therapy
education
psychological counselling
craft therapy
home schooling and assistance
educational inclusion
weekend club and socialisation
teenager club
information provision, instruction and advocacy
Services outside the Centre
summer camps
resource centre in Inclusive Education
community centre for Children and Youth (in the Iargara district)
Future Plans
Continue to work in the area of educational and social inclusion
A parents association was set up in 1997 to support each other in the care of their disabled children. In 1998 a small number of parents opened a day care centre which soon became a multi-functional rehabilitation centre. This continued as such until the educational inclusion programme started in 2005.
Supported by ChildAid since 2000.
Director: Viorica Cojocaru
E-mail: SperantaMD@mdl.net
Web: http://speranta.md
Post: 12/2, Traian Bl,
apt 2 Chisinau MD-2043
Republic of Moldova
Phone: 373 (22) 561100