By: Fred Duhoe | Voltaonlinegh.com |

A Human Resource Management student, Emma Elinam Sallah has mobilised resources to start a special needs school to cater for children with special needs in the Keta Municipality of the Volta Region.

Ms. Sallah who saw the need for the school, fell on her friends for support to rent an apartment and procure some materials needed to run the school.

She said the school, Anlo Special School at Tegbi has the endorsement from the Special Education Unit of the Keta Municipal Assembly and therefore called on parents to enroll their children in the school for better future for them.

Giving her reasons, Ms. Sallah noted that she feels unhappy about parents hiding their children with various forms of intellectual disabilities; hence denying them the opportunity to education.

She revealed to Fred Duhoe, a freelance journalist that “some parents want us to run a boarding system to permanently accommodate their wards but since running boarding facilities needs more financing and more hands, we will rather like to implement this system gradually.”

Anlo Special School – A Haven of Hope is under the Butterfly Ghana Foundation which seeks to champion the cause of children with special needs, their siblings, parents and the community as a whole as well as empower the youth within the Keta Municipality and surrounding areas.

The young determined Executive Director has started a sea foods business – Le Fresh Foods, as a fundraiser for the school.

Mad. Cecilia Gokah, the first parent to enroll her son with speech disorder after he was treated for cancer of the brain in an interview said “our educational system doesn’t have the conducive atmosphere to accommodate and teach our children with special needs, hence, my decision to bring my son here (Anlo Special School).”

In the whole of Volta Region, we have just one at Hohoe which is too far a distance. I don’t appreciate it when I see these vulnerable children helplessly on the streets begging for alms. It’s my desire for my son to become an interpreter someday” she stated.

Education in Ghana has done very little to address the plight of special needs children. Policies have been instituted to make education all-inclusive but this has not materialised over the years.

Much emphasis is rather placed on regular children to the neglect of children with special needs. Stereotyping, stigmatising and abuse of the rights in some cases is what parents of/and children with special needs suffer in society.

Source: www.voltaonlinegh.com