This October Martin Nafukho joined us in the United States for three weeks of conference talks, visits to organizations that work with children with disabilities and workshops. We will post a reflection from Martin soon. Meanwhile, his talk for the American Speech, Language & Hearing annual convention can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SlO_XD2kvQ&feature=plcp.
Dear Yellow House,
RE: MY TRIP TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA-ATTENDING
A CONVENTION ON CRITICAL LEARNING INITIATIVES & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 1ST
– 21ST OCTOBER, 2012
I
am grateful for your support that enabled me to travel for the
above conference at Ohio State University in Columbus (USA).
I appreciate Yellow house children’s organization and friends for making my
stay in USA very comfortable. I had a chance to share Kenyan experience in
rehabilitation to Occupational Therapy, Speech & language therapy students and
their faculty members courtesy of student organizations at OSU. Professors Michelle Bourgeois and Howard Goldstein threw a social dinner for a few of us participants at her house giving all of us a further opportunity to build networks and share both academic and cultural niceties across the world. Valerie Kinloch, Director of Service Learning Grant at Ohio State University threw a wonderful cocktail party that meant I was able to meet many learned people from a wide variety of disciplines. There
are great things we all can learn from each other and I am happy to have been accorded
this chance to represent the people of Kenya in this conference.
The
High lights of my trip culminated in presentation of a paper on 19th
October, 2012 “Obulala na amani”, [unity
is strength], showing how to engage and work with service consumers in
order to initiate long term solutions to their needs.
In
the opening key note address, Professor Dan Butin, Founding Dean of School of
Education at Mermick College and Executive Director, Centre for engaged democracy
summed up this way paraphrase. - “If the
people we serve don’t realize measurable gains, then probably we did not serve
them”. This means we need to constantly have innovative approaches to
engage service learners/consumers.
Dr.
Cornel West the guest speaker on 19th October 2012 re-echoed his
motto throughout his speech “you can’t
save people if you don’t serve the people”.
In Erie, Pennsylvania I had a rare chance of meeting with disaster response team
in the city who was training primary school pupils in fire detection, evacuation
in case of emergency and first aid drills. The unique thing is emergency
preparedness teams are run by volunteer health workers and police with support
from local community and government.
I
also had an opportunity to visit United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of greater
Cleveland where a program initiated by parents in 1950s has grown and is now
one of the two major programs in Ohio state serving people with cerebral palsy
in Children’s development services, Adult vocational services and assistive
technology provided at various levels with research support & very engaged
teams have greatly reduced the effects of C.P in mobility& independence
limitations among the C.P population of Cleveland.
In
the 2nd week I visited Adena Health Services sites and got
opportunity to spend 26 hrs with rehabilitation team of various specialties, pediatric
physiotherapist, speech therapist, trauma therapists and Occupational hand
therapist. Here I got new skills of critical neurological, orthopedic,
traumatic & congenital disorders team assessments and planning for
management leading to a smooth health, social and industrial placement based on
clearly realized rehabilitation programs.
It
did not escape my sight to notice the level of consciousness the American
people have in waste disposal, emergency preparedness, safety measures in
homes, roads, and the importance of good health promotion information prominently
displayed for caution, warning or instruction.
I
learned that a law written on a man’s heart is better than a caution pasted on
a man’s face.
Yours
Faithfully,
Martin W. Nafukho
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