Awareness and care does matter

There are enormous desires in one’s life, and what matters is how many of those he or she can achieve or fulfill.
At present, one of the issues I am concerned the most about is autism in my city, Chittagong. Many people in Bangladesh do not believe that autism is neither a child’s retribution nor of his parents. Another aspect is that some wealthy parents do not take responsibility of their children with autism. In the name of taking care of them, parents just send the children to some typical organizations that work with people with various disabilities. To me, this seems to escape from a burden, a child with autism. They do not even realize that the children with autism can cope up with the world if they are given proper treatment. Lack of knowledge and awareness among people about this disorder in this region might be one of the reasons there are no big institutions for this disorder. Even the ones that exist lack enough funding and cooperation for the same reason. I sometimes wonder, after the death of these children’s parents, there is no one to look after them since usually people with disabilities seem to be burden of the society and in many cases people ignore them. Additionally, since in the societies in my country, people do not positively accept children with any kind of disabilities, especially autism, it has been very difficult for children with autism to have proper attention and care. Furthermore, these children need special care and education to help them to be able to communicate with others and be self dependent. Therefore, it is inevitable to enhance the possibility of success of the few schools for autism that exist around to provide these children with proper training, to make sure that they can be independent up to some extent.
As I have said before, I am involved in a small school to work for children with autism and that this institution does no have enough resources. It does not have any trained professionals and enough proper teaching methods, however, I always appreciate their effort to improve the children’s situation though they do not have many resources or that they do not have any training on this specific disorder. How they gather ideas and knowledge for the children’s treatment is attending seminars, conferences locally and sometimes send a few teachers to neighboring country to attend short-term trainings. What is most exciting about this school is, the school was established by a mother who has a child with autism, and now the school is run by many other women, especially who have children with autism including some very enthusiastic women who want to make changes in these children’s lives.

I planned to get some more training on autism, which I can later use to help this school. To learn more specific about this disorder, last year I did an internship and got some training in The Help Goup, Los Angeles. Thus, as said before, I also have collected some materials including books, documentaries to share with the school I work in my community.

Being a Voices of Our Correspondent will help me get to know people who have the same passion to see some changes in their communities as I do, and thus they will also be resources for me in terms of providing me with guidance on how to develop this school, and learn more about similar issue in different communities. Thus I will meet more people who will raise their helping hands in finding solution to the problem my community faces today regarding autism.

In the 21st century, where globalization helps make things easier, helpless lives of these children with autism displays that there is so much to do to improve humanity. Considering all the above mentioned miseries of children with autism in this region, it has become essential to assist institutions for children with autism that already exist in community.