Help 1,000 children with disabilities like Miracle

Kyaninga Inclusive Model School (KIMS)is delighted to introduce our latest student, Bethany, who is nearly 4 years old and has a significant hearing impairment.  

Until Bethany was diagnosed recently by KCDC, her parents wondered what was wrong with their daughter and were concerned that she wasn't talking and couldn’t communicate like her brothers and sisters. Her mum told us they thought there was something ‘wrong’ with her and that she was a ‘slow child’. 

Just a month after joining KIMS, Bethany can be seen playing with friends and communicating using signs and gestures. She is using several words in Rutooro (her local language) and even some English words too! It’s heartwarming to see Bethany using some Ugandan Sign Language to communicate with her new friend Esther, who is totally deaf.  

 Unfortunately, Bethany is just one child amongst thousands of children suffering from a hearing impediment. In Uganda, approximately 13% of children are disabled and 23.1% of these have a hearing disability. Tragically of these children, only 6% of hearing impaired children transition from Primary School to Secondary school. (UNICEF, author. Situation Analysis on the Rights of Children with Disability in Uganda.)

As an inclusive school, KIMs is determined to change this and develop a deaf culture, whereby children like Bethany and Esther feel part of a community and are not isolated simply because we can't understand their means of communicating. All KIMS teaching and ancillary staff, as well as the other children, are learning Uganda sign language and Bethany and Esther are enjoying being able to express their needs and desires and being understood! In our regular professional development sessions, the teachers become the students, practicing the alphabet, numbers, greetings and basic words using Ugandan Sign Language. It has been noted that the children are much faster than the adults at remembering all the new signs, no matter how hard we try to keep up with them!

 The great news is that after a great deal of advocacy and campaigning, Ugandan Sign Language has just been introduced to the new Ugandan National Curriculum as an ‘additional language’. This brings hope to thousands of deaf children across the country who can look forward to being able to communicate freely with their peers and adults – something the rest of us take for granted. KIMS is planning to accelerate this process by employing a trainee translator who can support us to introduce Ugandan Sign Language to the KIMS curriculum. Eventually, all our KIMs children will go into the wider world as young adults able to use sign language to communicate with the deaf; and will become powerful advocates for deaf people, who are so often excluded from employment opportunities, and are denied a voice in politics and societal issues. 

 This is another wonderful example of how KIMs students will become change makers for a more equitable and inclusive world.