Here is Mrs Jackie Amama Mbabazi with his special needs child Mark Mbabazi at their home in Koloro :Born in October, 1978, Mark Bagwowabo Mbabazi, named after his paternal grandfather, was slow at crawling and hitting all the other milestones unlike all her other children. The family moved to Sweden in 1983, a place that offered them excellent understanding of Mark’s condition. For three years, he had good teachers in a safe and stimulating environment under a programme called inclusion.Under inclusion, children with disabilities get to share the same learning environment with other children. Apart from attending different academic classes, they play together, go for the same assemblies, culture classes and other extra-curricular activities at school.When they moved back to Uganda, the Mbabazis, with the help of the President, influenced the Ministry of Education to start inclusive education in Ugandan schools. They thought it would be a good idea since so many parents were grappling with how best to look after such children. Shimoni Demonstration School was chosen as the first trial school because it would easily be monitored by ministry officials, whose headquarters were a stone’s throw away.The programme took off and within a year, Shimoni had about 21 children with all sorts of disability. Mark was one of them. The children were between the ages of 6 and 17 years and some had never been to school, so there was a wide gap in their abilities. Because Mark was ahead of them, he stayed for four years before he got a scholarship from a special needs school in the UK, where he studied for three years. What the Mbabazis aimed for was to make Mark an independent individual and he pretty much hasn’t disappointed. He’s the home manager, shopping home supplies and making sure daily routines run smoothly.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:51:15 +0000
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