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| Erin Arenas giving a briefing on Kaleidoscope's advocacy |
It was her family’s own struggle looking for help for her youngest sibling who was diagnosed with autism that drove 17-year-old Erin Sae Arenas to start a program aimed at helping ethnic minority families, especially those on low income, cope with similar challenges.
This coming Oct. 6, a Sunday, Erin through
her Kaleidoscope project, will host a training seminar in Sheung Wan for 50
migrant domestic workers taking care of children with learning disability,
specially autism.
Educator and behavior specialist
Divina Ancheta will provide the training, which will focus on strategies to
integrate play in the development of children on the Autism Spectrum Disorder
(ASD).
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
Erin, who founded Kaleidoscope
while struggling with the rigors of high school life at the Stamford American
International School, said the project aims to provide help to low-income
ethnic minority families with children on the spectrum.
This will be done with help from volunteer therapists who will be asked to spare one to two hours of their time to provide much-needed training for carers of special-needs children.
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| Details of Kaleidoscope's first-ever training for OFWs looking after special-needs children |
“I started this project because my youngest sister was
diagnosed with autism at the age of three –and I figured that the costs of
therapy can be quite expensive and inaccessible to these families,” said
Erin.
“Additionally, I’ve come to be quite close with a few other
families with ASD children and have found that most share the same struggles.
Though there are free Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools, they’re usually
conducted in Chinese.”
Realizing this, Erin said she is now intent on “fixing” the gap between the needs of ethnic minority children needing special care, and the lack of access to resources that could help them.
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| Basahin ang detalye! |
This she intends to do by getting more people and institutions to know and understand their plight, and hopefully help towards addressing the problem. In the meantime, Erin is wasting no time providing valuable training to the carers.
By involving overseas Filipino workers who understand the
needs of children with special needs in her first community outreach, she hopes to gain a better insight on the
kind of special courses or seminars that Kaleidsocope could do, to better
achieve its goals.
The seminar titled “Carers’ Guide to Effective Use of Play”
is being held in partnership with Wimler Foundation.
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