Campaign for Inclusive Education
We want to make a change through raising awareness among mass people about the way people with disabilities are living their lives in this country. We think attitude is the main barrier for us. Otherwise we wouldn’t have fall behind in most of the sectors miserably.
Considering the program of the government to include all children in education by the year 2015, we have taken a step to raise awareness in different schools, colleges and universities. On Thursday, 21 April, 2011, we went to the Universal Tutorial school at New Eskaton for advocacy on this regard. We did a presentation on “Inclusive education of the children with disabilities”. Actually, we briefed them about the people with disabilities. Our briefing covered the following salient points:
1. How the UN Convention and also Bangladesh Govt is trying to establish the rights of them?
2. What are the supportive systems for them?
3. What is Universal Accessibility?
4. How could the school authority take some initiative to bring them to education?
5. What could be a possible alternative transportation etc
Besides these we tried to show among the parents, teachers and students how are individuals with disabilities are trying to study in different part of the Bangladesh.
For an example, we told them about Chittagong Residential Model School and College. They are the shifting her class from upstairs to downstairs for Tasnin Sultana last two years, as she is a person with muscular dystrophy, unable to climb the stairs. She is now in class IX. If every school would have shown the support like them a lot of Tasnin could have accessibility to education.
Everybody of the Universal Tutorial took the matter seriously, including the Principal and praised the initiative taken by the B-SCAN. A child with hearing disability is already reading in that school and they are eager to take more children with mild to moderate disabilities.