By Marianella Paul | Project Leader - Director Autismo en Voz Alta
Venezuela is currently undergoing one of the direst macro-economic challenges in the world: over 500% year-on-year inflation (equivalent to more than the annual US inflation every day), major disruptions in food and public services supply, nation-wide energy crisis, and the highest violent mortality rate of any country in the world; As you can imagine, many families, including the ones we serve, struggle to met their basic daily needs.
While most private schools in the country have been forced to increase as of January 2016 their tuition and fees in light of the significant challenge our country is facing, we have decided to maintain this school year (i.e. 2015-2016) our current fee structure and support our families. We decided that we just can’t add to our families’ struggle; we cannot allow our kids to leave school because of financial reasons and/or not have access to the assessment they need. We must support them, and the autism community, by ensuring we keep providing access to the assessment services and education they deserve, while maintaining the educational level and impact we are known for.
In this context, we continue to be highly committed to the autism cause in Venezuela; to ensure we keep providing a specialized autism assessment and education solution to our children/teens in need. This school year we are making improvements in our assessment process, we are developing our digital induction training, we continue our staff coaching program, we have strengthened our technical department with the hiring of two specialized psychologists, and we continue improving our progress review and intervention process. The financial support we provide to all students in our specialized education program went from 31% last year to 44% this school year, and we continue to provide full and partial scholarships for as many as 60% of our population (up from 50% last year).
As you can imagine, this is only possible with the support of our donor community. We believe each skill a person with autism develops is a major step towards independence, integration and our best contribution to his/her well-being. The smiles and relief of the parents, and the progress of our children and teens is our best reward.
We are committed to continue working with and for the autism community in Venezuela. With your support it is possible. Thank you!
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