A two-day training of trainers workshop on inclusive education dubbed, ‘Stories for Inclusion’, has been held at the Sowa Din Cluster of Schools at Ashaley Botwe in Accra.
The ‘Stories for Inclusion’ project, which focuses on making children with disabilities visible, is a partnership between the Niketan Foundation, Biblionef Nederland and Biblionef Ghana, three complementary Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), who are registered charities in the Netherlands and in Ghana.
The key project objectives are to provide access to inclusive storybooks to children and teachers to ensure disability awareness and understanding, and to advocate for disability inclusive classroom practices.
It also seeks to promote inclusive behaviour and understanding around disability through children’s books and storytelling, and to encourage children and teachers to talk openly about disability.
Els Heijnen-Maathuis, a Niketan team member with experience working with inclusivity, trained the educators on how to deliver inclusive instruction and encouraged writers, illustrators, and publishers to embrace diversity in their storybooks. Mrs. Patricia Arthur, Executive Director, Biblionef Ghana, spoke to educators on techniques of storytelling while Mr. Isaac Atta-Baah, Principal Programme Officer, Early Childhood Division, at the Ministry of Education, Accra, outlined the Ministries policies regarding Inclusivity.
Participants were honoured to have Honourable Daniel Alexander Nii-Noi Adumuah, Municipal Chief Executive, Adentan Municipality, pay a visit to the workshop where he interacted with Educators.
According to Els Heijnen-Maathuis, since 2015, Ghana has a rights-based comprehensive inclusive education policy. To make classrooms truly inclusive, teachers could start using storybooks as a tool to initiate meaningful conversation about human diversity and treating each other with respect.
“Let us promote and celebrate human diversity. All children are unique with their own talents as well as learning support needs. Acknowledging this and acting upon it, will make our education system and society at large, more just, and inclusive,” she noted.
In a speech read on his behalf by Chris Courtyard Fiawornu, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Adentan Constituency, Hon. Mohammed Adamu Ramadan reiterated his commitment to supporting the reading development of learners with disabilities and special education needs in his community.
“I encourage the people with disabilities in Ghana, along with government officials, partners, all people of Ghana, to keep organising and advocating until each individual is supported to realise their full potential,” he added.
Mrs. Dinah Osam-Tewiah, the Deputy Director, Administration and Finance, who represented the Adentan Municipal Director of Education, thanked the three NGOs for donating books to the children, saying, they would make good use of them.
Niketan provides education and support to children and young people with disabilities at a school for children with special needs in Bangladesh, and was awarded the 2021 Impact Challenge Award, in recognition of its innovative and holistic approach to supporting vulnerable children.
Biblionef helps children worldwide to discover the joy of reading by providing access to inspiring and motivational books. In the first phase of the project, copies of the children’s book, “My Name is Runa”, which is based on the true story of the challenges and triumphs of a young girl in Bangladesh with Cerebral Palsy (CP), will be made available to five schools along with four other titles depicting children with special needs as main characters.
