Speech Language Pathology in Kenya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuqQxn_-94

What I mainly want to say about this video is.. this mere 3 minutes of music, text and image took a good 15 hours of my life.

So here's a glimpse in to the SLP work I do. I have a very pediatric community based focus. Also, because I was funded through VSO patients did not have to pay to see me. This means that the work I did looked quite different to that of private practictioners.

Allow me a white girl moment..

‘I live on one plane – it is Africa always for me – I work, sleep,
seek personal encounters, play games, enlarge my general knowledge,
save my strength and money for Africa. Not – I do not pretend this
is entirely a zeal for selfless service, but because I express myself
in work for Africa.’ Margery Perham, 1937

Thank you Eliza for the wonderful quotes. b x

Last night I dreamt one of my high schoolers shot me.

I have started working half a day a week at a high school which people continue to refer to as "urban." This is a completely coded word, which in this case if unpacked means poor, mostly black, and a plethora of other things I have not asked about. Not because I don't want to know, but because the information I get will come in the guise of concern but really reflect more about the teller than the neighborhood. What I will be told will come down to low expectations, a healthy dose of fear mongering and a dab of general unpleasantness. I would rather discover these things as perceived by the youth who live there. Actually I lied, I really don't want to know about the neighborhood, I'd rather know about them.

What I do know however is there is much in the literature about the 'performance of school' and this establishment is a perfect example of what they mean. The halls are quiet, the doors are closed, students are in classrooms. The end. It is possible Wednesday afternoons are just special R & R periods, because I saw some teens watching a video, and I saw many teens sitting in clusters on tables, chairs and windowsills talking to themselves, despite the fact a teacher was present, but apparently busy working at her desk. I even saw some teens on computers. What I didn't see was teaching. One room had a teacher talking to her students. The rest were supervising at best and the students with no books, no pencils, no anything, genuinely appeared to be entertaining themselves. Quiet was the key here. Unspoken message: I don't care what you do, as long as it doesn't involve drugs, weapons or text messaging, but do it quietly.

So, in my dream, one of the girls on my caseload (who has no interest in speech therapy and I don't really blame her) came to my school, busted in and threatened to shoot me (but didn't). We instead had a discussion about accidental gun related deaths in the States. Do you know America has more youth gun related death than the next top 25 industrialized countries in the world combined? That gun related death is the second killer of youth in the country after traffic accidents?

Anyway, then in a second dream a group of boys came to my house and did shoot me while I was making them tea. Not very hospitable really. My response was one of general relief at not having to work towards my phd any more and then I said 'you all really need to stay out of jail, perhaps you should go to Kenya. We'll get my mum to fundraise.' (The American incarceration statistics are crazier than the gun ones)

And so this is why I am up at 5:21 am even though I don't have jet lag.

Not from fear of being shot but because I got thinking about this, seriously thinking about this notion of taking a group of American "urban" youth to Kenya, and perhaps their parents if they wanted who may well be younger than me.

P would say something along the lines of 'great, just what we need in Kenya' and then give me a lecture about being such a bloody white girl. But in a fit of idealism, imagine for a second the layer upon layer of interesting things you could talk about and learn about and read about with a sufficiently interesting reason to do so. A trip! An exchange. People have been doing exchanges for years. Why only the wealthy kids? Arguably kids who have less access to cash need it more. We can fundraise as a group as part of the lead up to the trip.

Yesterday morning I heard a teacher say 'he came to school high this morning, he was sent home and given a 30 day suspension.' Which part of this "punishment" makes sense? I'd love a 30 day suspension right now.. I bet he will sit home every day and repent his sins. Isn't it just permission to have a 30 day pot binge? Now he doesn't even have to bother with that pesky business of getting to school in the morning. How can an administration like this even claim they want to see their high schoolers graduate? what about a bit of community service in a drug rehab centre, or a bit of toilet cleaning duty in a retirement village after school? Have we totally lost our sense of creativity? Kids have grown dull because they don't even need to out smart the adults these days. The adults are mind numbing..

We spend a lot of time in my classes talking about school, race, inequity, literacy, achievement, expectations.. but it has been a long time since I have spent any time in a high school where a lot of these things play out one way or another in real and life impacting ways. It's been researched, it's been written about, we have solutions, there is just no systematic will to enact them. In America, people of European descent control the power structures including the education system and most of these white people are basically afraid to allow for a better education of African Americans, Latinos and minority populations. They are afraid it will mean less for them, less opportunity, less access, less money. These are not even tangible fears for most people. And there is a cost to not educating everyone. The cost is in what the public pays for all those inmates (25% of the world's incarcerated population are in American jails!) and the general insecurity. All these things are well written about, they are the big acknowledged structures the no one is really willing to do anything about, because it might involve effort, discomfort and well.. because there is something good on television tonight.

So I digress.. but back to my idea. Wouldn't that be a really cool experience? A service learning project culminating in a trip? For both the Kenyan and American high schoolers.. I would stay in Columbus to do a project like this. Now.. how to get my dissertation committee to agree to it?

Because there are 1001 ways to support the disability sector in Kenya I am going to post a request for books! Oh those funny old fashioned things. Remember them? Paper, words, sometimes illustrations. I have often dreamed of a month on an island with nothing but a box of good books and a small wooden shack down the beach that sells meals consisting mainly of fresh fish and coconut. A month in a bikini, hat and sun glasses reading books. Delightful.

Anyway these are resource books.. email trixiepujol@msn.com if you are interested in buying books!

NAME OF PROJECT

Improving the Services for Special Education and Rehabilitation in Kenya: Provision of Educational
Resource Materials.

2.0 PROJECT SUMMARY

The ultimate goal of this project is to improve the services for special education and rehabilitation by equipping professionals with resources required to reinforce quality intervention outcomes.

To achieve this goal we will need to establish a resource centre with up-to-date materials including books, magazines, and multimedia materials.

In the current situation, professionals, caregivers and parents lack information, and funds required to equip themselves with resources that improve their skills and abilities. SEP is also currently limited on the available resources at its disposal. There is an urgent need to equip our minimal library with relevant up-to-date materials, which will help develop knowledge and proper skills necessary in working with children with special needs. It will also help to empower parents and guardians on how to get involved with intervention while the children are at home.


3.0 INFORMATION ON THE ORGANISATION

Special Education Professionals (SEP) is a registered non-profitable organisation in Kenya. The members, consisting of Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language therapists, Teachers of Special Education Needs, Teachers of the Deaf, Low-Vision Therapists and Psychologists, are all volunteers who dedicate their free time and expertise to the Kenyan community. SEP operates mainly in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, but also provides assistance to some projects located in other parts of Kenya. The SEP office is located in Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital, Muthaiga.

SEP’s Mission Statement

SEP’s mission is to develop a multidisciplinary approach among the professionals working with children with special needs by upgrading the professional skills, standards and knowledge. By doing this SEP will be able to provide quality interventions to more children with special needs and empower their families by including them in the intervention programmes, throughout the country.

SEP started in 1990 and initially operated as a support group for professionals in the field of special education and rehabilitation. These professionals were mainly active in private schools that are frequented by children with more affluent parents who can afford the higher school fees and extra tuition.

In 1998 SEP started ‘community work’ whereby all members volunteered their services and expertise to also help the children belonging to the lower income sections of the society. To date the professionals have created time for the SEP consultations, workshops and project work to help children with special needs including cerebral palsy, autism, Down’s syndrome, learning difficulties, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mental challenges, developmental delay, communication disorder, hearing impairment, visual impairment amongst other conditions.

SEP has so far assisted 1350 families from different locations in Kenya during the consultations, and over 1000 children in various schools, homes and centres.

So far there have been over 100 workshops facilitated by SEP, which have been attended by approximately 20 parents, caregivers and teachers per workshop.

SEP works closely together with the families, caregivers and teachers as they are the key stakeholders in the education and rehabilitation of the child. Often families and teachers do not have sufficient understanding about special needs. Hence, they are not capable of offering the basic intervention needed to create a better life for their children. SEP believes that training and support empowers the parents, caregivers and teachers to create a positive environment. Capacity building with the families and all stakeholders involved in the upbringing of a child enables the child to maximize his/her potential in all areas of development.

It is a SEP policy to give peer support. SEP encourages sharing knowledge and skills, ideas and techniques amongst all professionals involved.

Activities of the Organisation since 1998

- Training
SEP believes in developing and strengthening the skills, abilities, processes and resources that are a requisite when working with children with special needs. SEP therefore organizes regular workshops on specific topics and therapy interventions related to the different needs; targeting parents, teachers and caregivers.

SEP organizes multidisciplinary training services which target all the professional Therapists and Special Needs Teachers within the organization, with the aim of improving their knowledge, skills and abilities, emphasizing equal partnership with the parents, and building on a child- centered approach.

- Capacity Building in Institutions and Community Groups
SEP provides furniture and therapy equipment, using locally available materials. Educational materials and toys are made in active participation with those involved in the daily interaction with the children. These educational materials and toys are made from affordable and recycled materials whenever possible and adapted to the specific needs of the children.

On request visits to schools, children homes and centres are organized to offer technical assistance to the teachers and caregivers, and to monitor implementation of the learned skills.

- Early Intervention Consultations
SEP organises Early Intervention Consultations. SEP advocates supporting families in caring for their children, therefore during the consultations, parents or caregivers receive information that helps them to better understand the condition of their child, and they obtain advice on how to deal with the challenges at home.

- Creating Awareness
SEP has also been involved in creating awareness on specific conditions and has so far published and widely distributed 7 brochures in both English and Kiswahili (Introducing SEP, Down Syndrome, Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Communication Disorder, Stammering, and Learning Difficulties).

Awareness campaigns on different topics are also arranged through the use of local media and presentations during public events in liaison with other stakeholders.


4.0 PROJECT PROPOSAL

SEP’s policy has been to offer help and support whenever professionals, families, schools, homes and organizations need assistance within the area of special education and rehabilitation.

SEP recruits professionals with training in one area of special needs who are then given further training in paediatric skills with a multidisciplinary approach. This therefore means the need for a variety in professional resources that are accessible to the professionals. This would create a great opportunity for professionals to deepen their knowledge and improve their skills consequently a better approach towards the children.

During the SEP Early Intervention Consultations and Capacity Building in Institutions and Special Needs Groups, we come across a wide variety of conditions and therefore also require a lot of information to be able to handle effectively the conditions.


Assistance with Books

Since SEP functions as a resource centre it would be very useful to expand the library. SEP has a number of videos on different conditions; and a limited number of books and magazines. However, there are a number of standard resource books, and more recent books on conditions, teaching programmes, therapy techniques and toy making available on the market. These are mandatory for an organization working with a multidisciplinary team and dealing with a variety of conditions in children. Acquiring them would be a great asset to our resource centre.

Books are normally very expensive and often not available in Kenya and we would therefore have to order them via Amazon.com

REQUESTED TITLES:

* Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Parents Guide
* The Out of Sync Child
* The Out of Sync Child has Fun
* OT for Children with Special Needs
* How to Set up a Classroom for Students with Autism
* How to Set up a Work Area at Home for a Child with Autism
* Helping Children with Autism Learn
* Social Skills Activities for Special Children
* Life Skills Activities for Special Children
* Siblings of Children with Autism
* Emergence: Labelled Autistic
* Facing Autism
* The Complete IEP Guide: How to Advocate for your Special Ed Child
* Thinking in Pictures and other Reports
* This is Asperger Syndrome
* Classroom Success for LD and ADHD Child
* Epilepsy and the Family: A New Guide
* When Your Child Has a Disability
* Bonding While Learning: Activities to grow your Relationship while Preparing for Reading Success
* Look Who’s Talking
* The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs: A guide for Parents and Teachers
* Childhood Motor Speech Disability
* Children with Visual Impairments: Social Interaction, Language and Learning
Seeing Clearly
* The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to your Adoptive Family
* Chicken Soup for the Soul
* A Parents and Teachers Guide to the Special Needs Child
* Paediatric Massage Revised for Children with Special Needs
* A Parent’s Guide to Developmental Delays: Recognising and Coping with Missed Milestones in Speech, Movement, Learning and Other Areas

If you would like additional information and clarification on any matter related to this proposal, please do not hesitate to contact us on:

Special Education Professionals
C/o Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital
P.O. Box 42325, Nairobi 00100.
Tel. (02) 7206000 ext. 322
Mobile: 0733-267869

Your investment in these matters will go along way in supporting the lives of the special child in Kenya.

Speech Language Pathologist wanted in St. Lucia

 We are a small child development centre in Castries, St Lucia that provides developmental assessments and therapy services to the island’s population. We are looking for a speech and language pathologist to provide assessment and therapy programmes for a range of children including learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, speech and language delays and disorders. You will be working alongside a paediatrician, psychologist, speech and language therapist and occupational therapist. You will be expected to offer individual assessment and therapy sessions and joint therapy sessions with our occupational therapist. There are opportunities to carry out visits to five of our special schools. We would prefer if you can offer between 3 and 6 months, from May onwards.

The island has much to offer including beautiful beaches, the world-famous Pitons, and a range of other tourist attractions.

For more information please contact Dr Kim Gardner (Paediatrician) at drkimgardner@gmail.com or

Claire Leadbeater (Speech & Language Therapist) at cleadbeat@hotmail.com

Silvia

A request from Lisa Fisher lisa.fisher83@gmail.com



"Silvia is seven years old, who at the age of ten months was severely burnt when the mosquito net around her cot caught fire while she was sleeping. Silvia underwent 2 operations to amputate her left arm and foot, however her family ran out of money and could not afford any further treatment. Her right foot is badly deformed and she also has abdominal and facial burns.
Due to this accident, Silvia has never been able to walk, go to the toilet unaided, go to school nor has she been able to run around with her friends and siblings. Silvia was kept hidden inside her hut for 5 years as the stigma attached to a person with such a disability meant great shame to her family and the village she lives in.

I met Silvia during a clinical day at the centre I was based at. Silvia was brought into the clinic by her village sub-chief. I saw that Silvia had a great spirit and such hope and vitality for life. I wanted to help. I wanted to give her an opportunity at a full life.
Whilst I was still in Africa, I contacted a couple, Janet and Frank Scaysbrook. This couple was the host family for Safari Kimanzi. Safari also had severe burns as a child and received medical intervention from the RPA (Royal Prince Alfred Hospital), Sydney. Janet and Frank flew to Silvia's village and made a short documentary about her injuries in June 2010. They then made contact with Channel 9’s RPA show regarding Silvia’s plight. Doctor Phillip Rome a plastic surgeon from the RPA heard of Silvia's story and has come forward and offered to do the corrective surgery pro bono to enable Silvia to walk for the first time. The surgery is scheduled to take place in May 2011. It will be aired on channel 9's RPA show soon after."
If you think you can help any way, please let me know. If you want to help financially you can transfer money into the following account:

Account Name: Support in LIfe Via Individual Action (SILVIA inc)
BSB: 633 000
Account No: 141975094
If you want to send a cheque please make it out to SILVIA inc. and send it to PO box 490, Margate Beach QLD 4019.

We are still looking for $14,000
Thank you all for your patience with this, I know you have been inundated with requests on email and facebook (not to mention other charities requests)... i just can't give up though.
I have my fingers crossed.
Love Lisa :)

Please come to our party... to raise money for Mombasa Children's Therapy Center

Cocktails for a Cause

Saturday April 9th, 2011

7pm til late

Mars Gallery

http://www.marsgallery.com/

Chicago, IL

Give Globally, Eat & Drink Locally

$50 per person, please pay online in advance

http://www.yellowhousechildrens.org/

make a note that it's for fundraiser ticket in the seller notes section

tickets include cocktails by Death Door Spirits & hors d'oeuvres

“the act of writing itself involves us in a quest”

Ely, Vinz, Downing & Anzul, 1997

There is a new publication out called S & L World http://www.slworldbulletin.com/

and what I realized yesterday is.. I would so much rather be writing informal articles for this kind of publication than writing papers for my university program. Alas. Today I am home ill and going to try and clear through this haze in my brain to work on some academic pursuits - a manuscript about speech therapy in Africa that I whave been working on for over a year now.

Writing is underemphasized in speech therapy programs. Yet, writing is an important method of communication. Writing is a public conversation. A story, a message. For me, I write to make sense of the world. I believe in the process.. But more importantly there are so many wonderful speech therapy related programs all over the world taking a myriad of forms that are appropriate for their setting. I think we need more of those stories, that may not come with references and may not be evidence based practice but nonetheless provide parents with hope, children with words and communities with education. I think we need these stories to inspire young therapists about what is possible, and help therapists working in places with limited support and resources think about alternative service delivery methods. I think we need these stories so we can get clinical feedback.  

So today I am forcing myself to sit and write. Its my second day in a row in my pyjamas at the kitchen table, trying to evacuate the fog with coffee, shun the internal cold with porridge, stewed fruit and much later soup. b x

A hands on
Alternative Augmentative Communication workshop

with Joanne Fry

February 8,9,10 and 11th

At Association for the Physically Disabled Kenya, Bombolulu workshops
Mombasa, Kenya

Educators, speech language therapists and related professionals who currently work with non verbal and minimally verbal children are encouraged to attend

If you are interested in joining us please email me at: beastaley@gmail.com

Speech and langauge therapy in Uganda

Kenya Update 

The only time I am ever up at 5:30 am is when I have jet lag. I arrived home from Kenya last night and this morning I have found myself wide awake since 3 am which will be fine until my 5:30 pm class tonight! I thought I would write to update about the things going on in Kenya while it is all fresh in my mind.

I had a lovely two weeks on the coast. Mombasa was a frenzy of activity in the week leading up to Christmas. I have never seen the streets or markets so packed with people. The evenings, were a hot chaos of noise and light, the vendors were still beside the street with their tables and small kerosene candles at 9pm, with people were milling around and spilling out of small dukas and hotelis.

Mombasa was hot. Not as hot as I know it will get next month and the month after but all the same sweaty, humid hot. I took a sun dress which was lined and couldn't bring myself to wear it. the lining just seemed like too much material in the heat. Of course I managed to get horribly sunburned despite my slathering of 55+ lotion.

As for Mombasa Children's Therapy Center.. I arrived to the news that our wonderful space now had a 'no occupancy' court order on it. We began the relationship with our landlord in August but our lease was actually signed in November.. oh. about a month after the landlord fired their agent, but after their agent had already signed the lease to someone else. The other tenant is suing for access. All our lovely refurbishments have been for nothing. Alex our business manager wants to wait until the court heard the situation out, but as far as I was concerned the agent and tenant are suing the landlord (the church) directly and we should count our loses and find somewhere else as this process could take months. The church agreed in a meeting to reimburse us our deposit and costs by January 20th.. fingers crossed. Alex was devastated by the situation. The bigger problem is that Alex and the landlord/the men on the church board are all good people, but not business people. The church surely knew about the other tenant long before we were informed but liked Alex, wanted Alex in the space and just hoped the other tenant would go away. In fact, they said to the other tenant "I don't know why you want this space, why don't you find somewhere else." We didn't go through the agent so the agent now has a bone to pick and the tenant apparently feels obstreperous because the church tried to talk him out of the place.

On a brighter note, Martin from Mumias Education Assessment Resource Centre (EARC) and Wellington from Vihiga EARC came to visit us in Mombasa giving us the chance to have lots of lengthy conversations about community work, models of care, thinking about the way forward as well as catching up socially.

Wellington and I eating sweet potato by the waterfront on Mama Ngina drive, Mombasa

 Martin & I, Indian Ocean view

Martin Nafukho (Occupational Therapist, Mumias EARC), Wellington Manyola (Vihiga EARC),

Dorothy Mvoi (Mombasa EARC)

Martin's EARC team under the leadership of Martha Odhiambo are always managing to get what they need from the district education office. Martha needs to run a course on 'how to build relationships and get your way with district officials'. Their district office actually pays their electricity bill amongst other things, a novel idea! Martin is requesting speech therapy (SLP) volunteers for 2012.. I thought it was time to give these staff at Mumias EARC a break from all the visitors they have been hosting but Martin disagrees. As he pointed out, now they have had speech therapy coverage for the last 18 months people in the community actually seek out and expect access to speech and language services. Potentially we (Yellow House) could look to hire one of the new Uganda SLP graduates to cover both Mumias and Vihiga.   

Wellington, bless him, spent the whole of last year being threatened by his (now) EARC coordinator because he applied for the post of coordinator and she wanted it. Rather than do anything about the death threats she was sending him, the district decided perhaps they should relocate Wellington to another district which he successfully fought. Vihiga EARC has lived under the tyranny of a a coordinator who the community openly acknowledged embezzled all their funding and publicly drank it away, so this new delight of a woman in the leadership position is pretty much par for the course.

DESPITE THIS, Wellington managed to secure a massive Safaricom grant to rehabilitate the parent teacher resource center and cerebral palsy center which is now complete. We have windows, we have an asbestos free roof and we have a huge space for training and building up a library. Wellington still needs money to paint the outside of the building and we are working on money for furnishings but the building looks amazing! Safaricom have also promised Wellington a training grant for several workshops in 2011 and if he succeeds in implementing the grant has been asked to submit a grant in 2012 for a vehicle to expedite their community work. I am so impressed and awed by his dedication. All the money for these projects skirts district and EARC bank accounts ensuring it is being used as designated. It's amazing. I just don't know that I would have the energy to do all he does, and still have to put up with all the bullshit politics that steal the credit for any success and yet actively hamper progress with petty demands and threats. 

We are looking to a great year in Vihiga however. Thanks to the ongoing support of the Rays we have money for Wellington's program which includes distributing epilepsy drugs, doing community outreach, educating parents, assessing children, supporting teachers and in 2012 will also be increasing occupational therapy service provision through Yellow House and start some new projects that include a large community garden (Have you seen the Edible Garden by Alice Waters? This is my fantasy for all our projects).   

So there is the quick and dirty update. Collectively, Martin, Wellington, Dorothy and other wonderful special educators and therapists have ensured service provision for so so many children again this year. It is a pleasure to be able to support them in what they do.

Happy New Year.. b x

Happy Holidays to everyone..

(these are the secondary school students from the School for the Deaf in Kilifi).

Thank you for all the support buying/selling aprons and bags...

and stay tuned for our fundraiser in Chicago, April 2011. 

 While Mombasa Children's Therapy Centre is still waiting on its license, we are looking forward to having two volunteers Jen and Karen to help with assessments and therapy plans in Mombasa this December.  b x

A Reader, the Empowered Leader

THE 7TH PAN-AFRICAN READING FOR ALL CONFERENCE

Gaborone, Botswana

 11th – 14th July 2011

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS [Deadline Dec 31, 2010]

For an application go to: http://6thpanafricanrfa.blogspot.com/

Organised by 
Reading Association of Botswana (RAB) 
International Development Committee - Africa (IDC-A) 
International Reading Association (IRA)

Stammering Workshop for Teachers

(Supporting Children who Stammer at School)

Are you a teacher?

Do you come across children/students who stammer?

Please come to this workshop at

NAIROBI HOSPITAL Annex

Date: - Thursday 18th November - 6-7:30PM (PROMPT)

 
 
The Workshop covers the following:


 Basic Information on Stammering/stuttering

 How to help children manage in classroom situations when they stammer/stutter

The workshop will be attended by the Stammering Support Group and qualified Speech and Language Therapists.
Any enquiries please contact/text Emma Shah; 0722 718 557 or email Steve at skmwenda@yahoo.com
COST:- 100 ksh

For the last 10+ years, the tiny community of speech language therapists (SLT) in Kenya have been pushing for a SLT training course. Discussions about need and complications with institutional partnership have stymied our efforts. This summer however, the questions I was getting from teachers made me wonder if perhaps we weren't jumping the gun a bit. I began to wonder if, as a profession, anyone actually knows what it is that we do..

So, in Isiolo the other week as I waited for the group of special educators to assemble for day 2 of 'Speech and Language Skills for Functional Communication' training, I put several question on the board about speech therapy. Nine people gave me their answers (each number represents a respondent).

What is a speech therapist?
1. He is a specialist who helps learners with speech problems
2. Speech therapist is a specialist who trains those with speech difficulties to overcome their speech problems through speech training, exercises etc
3. speech therapist is a specially trained person who trains people with speech problems to have one
4. A person who assists a learner to acquire language techniques in the right manner
5. Are professionals trained to assist with speech disorders
6. Is a qualified person who helps children with speech challenges (problems). He/she also identifies them
7. left blank
8. these are professionals who are trained to assist persons with speech problems
9. A person who is in charge (Change?) of children with special need e.g. deaf, stammerers making speech or describe, write or understand

What do they do?
1. Help learners with speech problems
2. They train those with speech problems how to vocalize, articulation and fluency
3. they give massage, physio therapy exercises to those with speech problems
4. They help learners to produce correct sounds when reading or speaking hence pronounce syllables correctly
5. They train the individuals to say or practice saying words after him/her
6. They train those children with speech problems
7. left blank
8. they correct speech disorders
9. they assist children with special needs either through exercises or if there is a need for medical assistance. Helps in making practice in either achieve pronouncing of putting up words

Describe speech therapy…
1. left blank
2. It’s a therapy given to those with speech problems
3. speech therapy involves checking all the organs of speech to find out if they are functional
4. In speech therapy you guide the learner to articulate sounds in their correct positions and help them to produce different sounds without the mother tongue interference of given sounds
5. Is an exercise which is carried out during training or practice
6. Speech therapy is the cure of speech problems
7. left blank
8. this is a process that involves assisting persons with speech disorders e.g. start teaching single letters, words and then sentences
9. a stammerer can be, a deaf, slow learner, mentally handicapped, any person/child who is not able to verbal or understand

Who do speech therapists work with?
1. teachers
2. They work with ENTs
3. They work with ENT specialists, OT’s and PT’s
4. It’s done with the help of a teacher or parent of the affected learner or person
5. trained personnel, doctors, volunteers
6. The health institutions and parents of the children with problems
7. left blank
8. they work with health workers, social workers and teachers
9. caretakers- e.g. parents, teachers and children or persons with certain disabilities

No one said children! Of all these teachers, no one thinks we actually work with kids!

Does Kenya need speech therapists?
1. yes
2. Kenya does need speech therapists as there are many children/people who have speech difficulties especially deaf, autistic, mentally handicapped and multiply handicapped
3. yes
4. yes
5. yes
6. yes
7. yes
8. yes it does
9. by all means possible

How will Kenya meet that need?
1.education
2. By training teachers through workshops, by training speech therapists by establishing institution where personnel were trained
3. By training more professionals in that area
4. By training more speech therapists and enabling more teachers to acquire the knowledge of speech therapists
5. Training of professionals, through induction courses, seminars/workshops
6. By giving training
7. They training and workshops
8. by training some professionals of speech therapy
9. by training children’s caretakers e.g. teachers though workshops. At least if possible every term teachers attend speech and language skills for functional communication seminars.

Interesting huh? I realised when I read through these responses that I myself have spent the last several years modelling that a speech therapist is a person who travels about the country training people. I train teachers, occupational therapists and parents, but rarely rarely work directly with children. When I do, it tends to be in a hospital context rather than in the classroom.

The take home message from all this is we need to increase awareness about what we do in an explicit way. I will start all my trainings with an activity that asks participants to consider the profession and scope of practice! b x

Hello from Kenya..

Lots of exciting things happening, but very little time online to report. However... our website http://www.yellowhousechildrens.org/ should be up in running within months. Hooray.

I'm please to report that we anticipate the Mombasa Children's Therapy Center opening sometime between now and January and we are about to be in a whirl of fundraising to make this actually happen.

b x

As my school year wraps up, and after months of indecisiveness about my summer, I am officially going to Kenya for the better part of four months. When the panic caused by my end of quarter deadlines recedes, underneath there is just plain excitement. I am looking forward to being in a new space, to using my Ki Swahili and for the hot and dusty roads I will travel.

I have decided to blog this summer because I have to write papers (graduating mid 2013 is the goal!) and this form of reflective writing is a nice compliment to a more academic style of writing. As I have been told, it is through writing that educators and social scientists construct knowledge and meaning and make sense of experiences. It is through writing and processing that I become the learner rather than the teacher. So write I will.

My position in Kenya throughout 2007 & 2008 was on the Children with Disabilities Empowerment Project and I will return on the tail end of next phase which was funded by DFID and ends September 4th. The new and snappy acronym for the project fails to come to me at this time. The major difference in the two projects was a change in targeted districts and an increase in speech therapy service provision so that three speech therapists were covering the project area (one in Western Kenya, one in Nairobi and one in Eastern Kenya). I am picking up the Eastern Kenyan portion of the project which means I get to spend time working out of the rather heavenly Kilifi on the coast.

Having spent the past year thinking about pedagogy and diversity, equality and literacy, having the opportunity to go back to Kenya is also a chance to consider the systems and practices the CDEP project was attempting to support. As I pack my skirts, and select my books for the trip, I am thankful for the opportunity to revisit the learning experiences gifted to me by my colleagues. Here's to all that this summer will bring...  

Yellow House Children's Services has finally finally finally become a something!

So at this point, before I go onto update.. I need to say

Thanks so much to Patrick Moran for all his wonderful advice and wisdom and general commensensedness. Also for registering us as a non for profit.
Thanks to Meabh Friel for her work on our fabulous logo which we are in the process of finalizing.
Thanks to Matt Belcher for patiently explaining about websites, domain names and servers which we are also in the process of sorting out.
Thanks to Thomas and Mel Staley for their generous donation and Laura Voight for raising over $2000
Thanks to Jamie Kinder and Abbie Olszewski for agreeing to be on the advisory board and their hours and hours of listening, reading and giving sound advice.

So what are we doing?
In Mombasa - Dorothy Mvoi, (who will direct and run the Yellow House Children's Clinic) and Kennedy Otsola have filed the paper work to register Yellow House in Kenya and open a bank account (exceedingly complicated and lengthy bureaucratic processes) as well as gather a team so that we are in a position to rent a clinic space.

The clinic will serve as a day care/preschool for children with special needs so their parents can go to work. In addition we hope to provide speech therapy services to these children as well as out patients using volunteer as well as local therapists. We also intend to hire a part time occupational therapist.

In Vihiga - under the wonderful guidance of Wellington Manyola, the Yellow House Parent Teacher Resource Center has been registered and the team appear to have secured the costs of rehabilitating the building. Yellow House will provide funds to furnish and support operations of this community center which we envision to become a multi-purpose learning space. Once again the focus is helping the families and educators of children with special needs better support the children in their lives.

The Vihiga and Mombasa projects have come from the ideas and passion of both Dorothy and Wellington, and will continue to be directed under their vision and leadership. It is amazing to get to work with such dedicated people.

We will be doing fundraising events in Columbus, New York and Chicago in 2010 so that Dorothy and Wellington have the opportunity to bring their community centers to life. thank you thank you in advance for all your support.  

Bea x

Speech Therapy in Kenya

August 2009
East Africa is synonymous with wildlife not speech therapists so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that in Kenya there are an estimated 6500 giraffes per clinican. But for the eight Kenyan based therapists the potential emergence of a Speech Language Therapy (SLT) training program and the formalization of a Kenyan Association of Speech Language Therapists (KASLT) could potentially increase the capacity of service provision nationwide as well as ensure professional standards and support both in-country and regionally.

Reportedly there has been a speech therapy presence in Kenya since the late 60’s and early 70’s through Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). Of our current practitioners, Elisabeth Kruger- Scheltema has been working as an SLT in Kenya for over twenty years establishing a practice in Westlands and co-founding Special Education Professionals (www.sepkenya.com) which amongst its activities provides free multi-disciplinary assessments to children with special needs one Saturday per month at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital. Emma Shah and Nuala Alibi have also been here for more than a decade and between them, these core members of the Kenyan profession have been working hard to treat children and adults as well as educate others about our discipline. Outside of SEP’s clinic and the VSO sponsored speech therapy positions (VSO has had 5 speech therapists each taking 2 year positions in the last 9 years) speech therapy has only been available to those who have been able to afford it.

Uganda’s speech therapy services were also propped up by VSO’s support of internationally trained SLT’s and so began a ten year process of creating a university program to train Ugandan students in the profession. Partnering with Makarere University, this program’s first cohort, who started classes in February 2008 are still half way through their three year degree. Whilst it was thought that having more than one speech therapy training program in the region would potentially strain resources, now the Uganda program is up and running, we are eager to do the adapt and modify the program to train Kenyan therapists . Our needs are as great and as the development industry looks toward sustainable programming it is clear that one way to create change and serve the special needs population as awareness about the field grows is to start a training program. Currently or biggest challenge has been to find a suitable ‘home’ or partnering institution. Whilst working within the Kenyan Institute of Special Education (KISE) would allow a widespread training within the special needs sector many argue that teachers are already overloaded with work and not able to provide the special attention to individual students. However, a possible benefit of teachers trained in communication therapy techniques includes language rich classrooms that actively support and engage children’s communication skills within the curriculum.

Nairobi University has also shown interest in taking on a curriculum which would provide the program with support from their faculty members as well as the possibility of training clinicians both in the medical and educational aspects of the field.

As our group of therapists engages with other stakeholders in the field, the myriad of factors that must be considered begins to highlight the difficulties in the process of establishing a speech therapy program. Yet we know from the work of Mary Wickenden in Sri Lanka, the budding programs in Bangladesh and Uganda, and the graduation of founding classes of speech therapists in Togo that it can be done. Whilst program models must be adapted to local needs we hope to gain understanding of the processes by communicating with those that have already been through the process.

Disability and rehabilitation has been on Kenya’s political agenda since the early 60’s and in 2009 what we have is a fairly comprehensive educational network that trains teachers to work in special education and gives parents of children with disabilities access to school via education assessment resource centres. While the quality of the teaching and services delivered through these centres varies widely from district to district there would be a structure in place for speech therapists to work within the Ministry of Education structures to target large caseloads of children with a specific region. In addition, Kenya has a system of provincial hospitals where pediatric occupational therapists already work to treat children from birth to five as needed.

Many countries including Kenya still use 10% as the statistic for disability prevalence. This is based on World Health Organization data that may or may not reflect realities on the ground. Kenyan government has recognized that need to survey disability and is in the process of evaluating the framework to ascertain prevalence, desegregating gender, different disabilities and geographic prevalence. This data should be available in 2010 and will hopefully provide additional support for the emergence of our field. Looking at the assessment centre data recorded between 1999 and early 2007 in Kisumu district, 3439 children were assessed for a variety of reasons. Less than 5% of the children were diagnosed as presenting with speech or language difficulties (as a primary or concomitant diagnosis). Given that 21% of the children were identified as having some kind of learning or cognitive difficulties and 27% of the children presented with some kind of hearing related issues we can make the assumption that this is a huge under representation of presenting speech and language problems. It may be that what we find is a need for generating awareness about the field, however any marketing of the profession must go alongside the development of programs that meet individual’s needs as we can’t simply generate awareness and apologize that the services are unavailable.

To help consolidate our professional base, the Kenyan speech therapy community have been in the process of formalizing a Kenyan Association of Speech Language Therapists which will hopefully have an online presence later this year. The objectives and the mission of KASLT are still a work in progress but we hope that the organization can serve to bring together speech language professionals and others that work alongside them. We have seen an increasing number of entrepreneurial people billing themselves as speech therapists to fill the identified gap, we have also seen a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have visiting volunteer therapists for a short duration, but no follow up is possible as they are unaware of the SLT community in Kenya. KASLT also organizes a bi-annual East African Speech Therapy Conference which gives practicing clinicians an opportunity for continuing education provided by guest lecturers.

While the task of organizing both a professional body and a training program can seem daunting, especially as individuals members also have work and family commitments to honour, there is no doubt that we will get there albeit it ‘pole pole’ (slowly slowly) as they say in ki-Swahili.
______________________________________________________________________
Lynne Lenten, Jenny Cox, Laura Dykes, Emma Shah, Elisabeth Kruger, Rachael Tuckley, Poonam Shah and Nuala Alibhai are the current SLP service providers in Kenya. Members of KASLT hope to present on the emergence of the SLT field at both the American Speech and Hearing Association annual conference in 2009, and the International Association of Logopedia and Phonologica conference in 2010

The Role of Speech Therapy in East Africa

“This is the finest place I have known… an illusive place where nothing is as it seems… I am mesmerized”
David Livingstone 1866

East Africa is one of those regions that you already know about. Stanley met Livingstone here. Freddy Mercury was born here. Barack Obama has relatives here. You’ve read Kuki Gallmann’s “I dreamed of Africa” or seen Meryl Steep in “Out of Africa.” Maybe you loved “Gorillas in the Mist” or “The Last King of Scotland.” East Africa is in the media and it’s in literature and it’s everything or nothing depending on who is writing the story. It’s blessed with abundance or poverty depending on your point of view.

Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya are the three major players in the East African region with Burundi and Rwanda the newest members of the community. The countries are united as a relatively stable tourist destination (amongst other things) and it’s a place where people come to view vast panoramas, witness the migration of animals and experience the huge sky hung with sun, moon and stars like toys on a giant crib mobile. The region is also home to approximately thirteen speech therapists whose jobs seem to cover the gamut of services possible for our field. This article was written because of the continued interest expressed to our group by American based speech therapists who want to know who we are, what we do and how to join us.

Who are we and what do we do here?
To give you an idea about the types of work currently being done by speech therapists in East Africa, the following vignettes describe the varied jobs of six speech therapists based in Kenya and Uganda (One Kenya, one expatriate and four with Voluntary Services Overseas).

Fiona Bell & Sarah Bagnall

Almost a decade in the making February saw the beginning of a three year degree program granting a Bachelor of Science in Speech Language Therapy at Makarere University in Kampala. Oft looked at as one of the continent’s leading universities, speech therapy students will graduate with their degrees from Makarere’s school of Medicine. Thirteen students make up the first cohort and graduate late 2010. Because of the newness of the program and field all applicants were required to already have a related degree or diploma (for example there are occupational therapists, special education teachers etc) and go through an interview process prior to acceptance. Twenty two students were granted admission but due to the last minute fee hike by the university only thirteen were able to generate sufficient funds. It costs approximately $900 per school term with the total course costing $5400. Given that students are expected to attend full-time for three years money is expected to be an issue. The government has agreed to subsidize fees but not for this initial class.

The Makarere University program is currently being run by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) speech therapists Sarah Bagnall and Fiona Bell with the support of VSO Uganda and Makarere’s own faculty. Based out of Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, Sarah and Fiona write lesson plans, teach around four courses each term and supervise clinic. The problem based learning curriculum was adapted from a speech therapy program in Trinidad and serves to provides students with all the foundation courses as well as give them opportunity to apply the information as they learn it. This provides a challenge for students who are a used to a much more rote memorization type of education.

Sarah and Fiona have an incredibly large work load but also continue with community outreach and to see outpatients as needed. As the curriculum diversifies to cover more specialized topics (feeding and swallowing, voice disorders) the plan is to have guest lecturers come for a month and teach on these subjects. It should be noted that while Mulago Hospital is 1500 bed hospital and Uganda’s largest national teaching, referral and research hospital at this time there is no inpatient speech therapy service. Aside from the lack of staff to fill these positions Sarah and Fiona report that work will have to be done to generate awareness within the medical field about our discipline and the services we can provide in relation to acute care.

In Kenya, whilst there has been talk of starting a degree granting program for the last 20 years at this time it is still only talk. Kenyatta University in Nairobi may be willing to take on a program but it is a long way from accepting their first class. Steps are being taken however as last September the Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE) provided funds to pay for the speech therapy training of Grace Macharia at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Grace is an exceptionally talented special education teacher who is bonded to return to Kenya at the completion of her degree and practice in Kenya for at least two years.

Lynne Lenten

Lynne is Dutch educated speech therapist who came to Kenya for love and negotiated the wads of paperwork required to get an expatriate work permit. Since getting that very expensive and hard to come by piece of paper she has started her own private business. Lynne typically sees children for one-on-one or small group therapy in their home or at their school. By her report she sees individuals with a variety of diagnoses including autism spectrum disorder, developmental delays, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, specific language impairment, articulation issues and velopharyngeal insufficiency. Clients are seen one to three times week and individual 30-45 minute sessions of speech therapy cost between $20 and $35. This cost alone excludes services many of the needier children but for the four speech therapists that provide direct services it is a fact that whether you are at a hospital or running your own practice the bulk of your clients must be able to meet the fees. Lynne also collaborates extensively with the schools and parents who hire her, and is frequently called upon to come in and do trainings.

In late 2007 Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital also started a weekly multi-disciplinary child development clinic. Lynne is responsible for the speech therapy assessment portion of the evaluation though reportedly the multi-disciplinary piece hasn’t really taken off just yet. Lynne also volunteers with Operation Smile on their annual Kenya visit. Since last year Lynne has been providing ongoing speech therapy for one of their 22 year old female patients who received a sphincter surgery for velopharyngeal insufficiency.

Michael Terry

Mike is a British trained speech therapist who was recruited by VSO to work for the Nairobi branch of the Association of Physically Disabled Kenya (APDK). Founded in 1958 APDK is a well established organization that works across Kenya providing rehabilitation and integration services in a variety of settings. Mike’s primary role is to train other rehabilitation health care providers to assess and treat speech and language difficulties in children who are referred to APDK. Minor difficulties are rarely referred in Kenya so children who are seen by this organization tend to have significant issues sometimes related to factors such as cerebral malaria, hydrocephaly or multiple disabilities. Mike works with his colleagues encouraging them to consider the less visible issues relating to speech and language disabilities as they provide outreach in Makuru slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Home to about half a million people APDK staff visit families in Makuru slum, evaluating children in their homes and providing recommendations for appropriate educational placement as well as therapy strategies for caregivers. Mike also works in consultation with a small day care initiated by parents and community members of Makuru in 2003. The children enrolled tend to have cerebral palsy or significant cognitive disabilities

Emma Shah

Emma is East Africa’s one adult focused speech therapist! She works part time at 2 major hospitals seeing patients who are referred by their doctors. Emma’s in-patient and out-patient caseload covers adult acquired disorders such as aphasia, dysarthria, dysphagia, voice, stuttering, as well as tracheostomy management. In addition she runs a monthly Laryngectomy group, a stuttering support group and an aphasia support group.
Emma reports that her biggest frustration is that lack of neurological rehabilitation unit in Kenya (South Africa is the nearest) so that even basic things like not feeding patients lying down is a problem (even in ICU). There are plans to start a ‘state of the art facility’ but there is little money for equipping the unit. Emma reports that there is virtually no team working concept among hospital based therapists although the doctors she works with can be very supportive.
For private and hospital based therapists the patients being seen are of course the slim minority that can afford to pay for the services. Whilst there are government schools and centers for children with disabilities they rarely have money in the budget for a speech therapist.

My work

I work on a four year European Union funded project entitled “Children with Disabilities Empowerment Project” (CDEP) of which speech therapy is only one strand. When I was brought on in January 2008 I was given two months to get to know how my district Educational Assessment Resource Centre (EARC) worked and write a week long speech therapy course to train forty EARC staff and/or special education teachers from across Kenya. Those forty participants then went back to their twenty districts and each team of two was responsible for replicating the training to twenty teachers. In a nutshell, in addition to actual training, I support others training on speech therapy techniques and I make classroom follow-ups to support the teachers attempt to put some of the theory into action. We focus on ‘functional communication’ and I encourage teachers to support spoken words with written words, pictures and signs in a whole language type approach.

The Need

To give you a context of the need for speech therapists Kenya alone has an estimated 1.8 million individuals with disabilities under the age of 19 only 27,000 who are currently in school. Whilst there is a referral, assessment and school placement system in place, the reality and the quality of services within the system vary widely. Jochmann (2006) estimated 1.3 million Ugandans had communication or feeding disorders.

Supporting Organizations

Though there are many non-government organizations working in the field of disability in the region (Handicapped International, Leonard Cheshire etc.), Special Education Professionals (SEP) www.sepkenya.com is a home grown organization which has always been populated with Kenyan based speech therapists. Started in 1990 as a support group, in 1998 they started free monthly consultation days at Gertrude’s Children’s Hospitals. There are currently 25 volunteer member speech therapists, occupational therapists, special needs teachers, and an educational psychologist. Referrals tend to be by word-of-mouth. A part from free assessments and SEP members regularly run trainings in the community, at schools and with partnering organizations. They also visit schools and other centers for individuals with disabilities to provide education, support and recommendations.

I would be remiss not to mention also the work of the Autism Society of Kenya who has developed a special diet-based program for the several classrooms of children with Autism at City Primary School in Nairobi. Started by Felicity Nyambura, a grandmother of a child with autism who was shocked at the lack of support her grandchild was receiving and the lack of information available in Kenya, she promotes awareness about Autism nationwide.

The Issue of Languages

East Africa is multi-lingual. Throughout Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya it is common for classroom teachers to be working in three or more languages. I encourage special education teachers to work in local vernacular in their classrooms if the group of children is all from the same region, but in some areas where children come from a mix of ethnic/tribal backgrounds the teacher may not even speak a child’s mother tongue. There is definitely no one size fits all answer to the issues of language as the situation varies regionally.

As a volunteer in Tanzania a working knowledge of Swahili would be imperative, in Uganda it’s essential to know some Luganda. In Kenya while some knowledge of Swahili goes a long way towards begin accepted by community members beyond a few social phrases most of our work happens in English. University training is done in English so anytime you are working with teachers there is an expectation that it will be done in that language.

Differences in the work…

One evening I arrived home from work and my newly arrived housemate looked at me and said, “So this is what you do?” My face was covered in dirt so thick it looked like I was wearing badly applied makeup, I was sunburned, my hair looked like a shrubbery and I was completely dazed. I’d spent the day on the back of a motorbike visiting one rural school after the next in the back of beyond. At each school I was expected to observe a lesson then sit with the teacher and point out all the great things they were doing as well as make some recommendations and schedule a follow-up session. School visits also include mandatory tours of the facility, introductions to anyone who passes by and before and after meetings with the school principal. How is my work here different? I never had a day like that in the States.

Another time I was in a district about three hours from my home and we once again took a motorbike to a rural family home. As we waited under the tree in the family compound mothers started arriving with their little ones, unrolling their scarves for the children to lie on as the occupational therapist and I spent the next couple of hours doing a therapeutic play group with the parents. I never had a day like that in the States.

But generally the difference between the work here and the work in the United States all depends on the work that you do. Here I find I spend a lot more time at schools that have no materials. Not a few books on an old bookshelf as you might find in some low-resource neighborhoods in the States, but no bookshelf. Some schools literally have little more than mud walls, a tin ceiling and some wooden seats for the children to sit on. This forces me to be extremely creative in making recommendations for incorporating language techniques into the classroom routine! In these situations I definitely wonder if speech and language is perhaps their greatest need.

Another difference is the number of times you are likely to see a patient. If I see individual children at the hospital I find that follow-up is difficult for many families. Families might have come in for an initial evaluation but due to transport costs they will not be able to afford to return for treatment even if the actual therapy is free. Overall, therapists find them selves doing a lot more training of parents and caregivers and working to help people just understand the basic issues related to a child’s disability. People still want to believe there is a magic switch that we can hit to get their children to talk. It’s difficult to get people to change their behaviors to meet the needs of the child rather than expecting the child to do as they’re told.

Working in this part of the world has its ups and downs like any job. I personally think the highs are much higher and the lows are much lower. I frequently get frustrated when teachers are two hours late for a training and say “Oh Bea, it’s African time” as a way of apology. I often throw up my hands in disgust at the poor attitudes of adults who should know better. There was the teacher that blocked a special needs child from her classroom door because she didn’t “work with kids like that”, or the teacher who mocked a child with a stutter before a class of sixty peers. It gives me heartache to hear of adults turning a blind eye when a child with a physical disability is being kicked by able bodied peers on a playground. Or of principals that expel children with epilepsy because the other parents believe it’s contagious and threaten to remove their child from the school. But, but, on the other hand there are parents who will wait hours to see you because they heard you were there, and there are caregivers who have carried a sixty pound child on their back for a forty-five minute walk and then made a two hour bus journey so you could help their child. There are bus drivers who take their vehicles out of their way down a bumpy dirt alley to pick up a patient who has had a stroke and can no longer walk so well, there are teachers who create children’s books from memory using markers and crayons because they don’t have any. I worked with teachers in Chicago who didn’t crack a smile for a whole year and here where we work with nothing, no books, no materials, nothing, teachers are nearly always willing to give it a try. My colleagues are always welcoming and even though they sometimes look at me as if I’ve completely lost their marbles, when I return to their schools or clinics or assessment centers I can usually see an attempt at implementation.

As my own contract wraps up later this year and I begin the process of documenting my work including data on observable behavior changes I feel like I haven’t even begun to accomplish my goals. There are so many more parents, children and teachers to work with. And given my time here, did I even do anything? How can you tell? After much thought on these questions I’ve concluded that I don’t think you can ever record the true impact of your words and actions. Much of what we do is sow seeds, ideas and awareness. Perhaps all anyone heard was “we should be nice to children.” Perhaps they learned to use a picture schedule in their autism room or just to stop calling the children “stupid.” Of course maybe no-one was listening to that because they were waiting for me to suggest blowing feathers and balls of paper through straws and they just wanted their “speech kit” full of whistles and balloons which was administered by the Ministry of Education several years ago. It’s hard to tell who was paying attention, but perhaps one person got it and that one person will make the difference for one child. And perhaps that’s enough.

Getting Involved:

September 9-13, 2008 East Africa’s speech therapists will be coming together for their second annual conference. Dr. Kate Gottfred, Dr. Laura Justice and Dr. Joan Kadeverak will all be attending as guest lecturers. If you are interested in attending or more information please email me at bea.staley@gmail.com

Volunteering with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO)
If you are interested in more information about volunteering with VSO please contact them at www.vsoint.org. Americans are recruited through VSO’s Canadian office in Ottawa. Volunteers travel to Ottawa for an assessment day as well as two intensive trainings designed to prepare you for your time overseas. All of VSO’s positions are ‘skill sharing’ or training positions in an effort to create a sustainable impact once the volunteer has left. At the time of writing 2 year placements were available at both the Kenya Institute of Special Education located in Kassarani about 15km north of Nairobi and Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda. Personally I think both jobs are really interesting and varied, have great local teams and are in urban settings with great nightlife. VSO volunteers receive housing and monthly stipend of $200-300 depending on the country. Most volunteers find the stipend adequately covers all basic living costs, but it’s harder if you are in a big city like Nairobi or Kampala where there are more tempting diversions.

Short Term Volunteering
If you are interested in volunteering your time or expertise at Makarere University on a more short-term basis please email speechuganda@yahoo.com
If you are interested in volunteering in Kenya please contact the author at bea.staley@gmail.com
If you are an experienced therapist who has been involved in setting up a training course in a country where there was previously no SLP training we would love to hear from you.

Donations
Organizations like Leap Learning Systems and Linguisystems have been generous in their donation of texts and children’s books for our East African programming. Text book or other material donations continue to be most appreciated. Please send them to:

Speech Therapy Program
VSO Uganda
PO Box 2831
Kampala
Uganda