Our Syria mission recently had its first opportunity to serve children in Aleppo with visual, hearing, mental and physical impairments, when the Syrian government asked our teams specializing in Child Protection, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) for help.
When our staff met with administrators at the Al-Amal Centers—which provide education and services for children and young people with disabilities—our assessments revealed a great need for psychosocial support, as well as assistive medical equipment. We subsequently made five visits to the centers to provide activities for the children and their teachers, and deliver supplies such as wheelchairs, crutches and other items. Some of our interventions coincided with World Children’s Day, which is commemorated on November 20 and informs children about their human rights.
“Working with children and youth with disabilities is extremely important and can make a real difference in their lives by helping them develop their abilities, ensuring their rights and promoting their integration into society,” says Syria Senior Child Protection Officer Mouyad Abdulkareem Nammeh. “We must also remember that children with vulnerabilities are exposed to greater risks than other children.”
We included teachers and administrators in the Child Protection activities, both as helpers and as participants, because their strong relationships with the children helped us to build trust. Here is rundown of the interventions we ran for each center, gearing our activities to each type of disability.
Center for Mental and Physical Disability
At the Center for Mental and Physical Disability, we worked with 60 children from 4 to 16 years old, providing activities to improve their psychological and social well-being within a safe and supportive environment where they could express their feelings, learn to communicate effectively and build trust with others through play. Activities included fingerpainting, which helped the younger children learn colors and shapes, as well as with sensory perception, creativity and social interaction. The team also held a question-and-answer competition to encourage participation, cooperation and interaction, and to help children develop focus and linguistic skills. A children’s game where the goal was to throw a ball into a basket helped with hand-eye coordination, focus, balance and control.
Center for the Care of the Hearing Impaired
On World Children’s Day, our team visited a group of 100 children from 6 to 18 years old at the Center for the Care of the Hearing Impaired, to raise their awareness of their rights and encourage group interaction. Our team asked the children to draw pictures about World Children’s Day themes and to share with their peers what their pictures meant. We then grouped the children into smaller clusters and asked them to describe ways that every child can be included in activities at home, school, play or while doing chores. The younger children played a short memory-based game to help them develop their memory skills, learn their colors and improve their attention spans.
Center for the Care of the Blind
We worked with children and young people from 6 to 21 years old at the Center for the Care of the Blind, helping them increase their self-confidence and independence, and offering guidance to help them surmount learning difficulties and adapt to their environment. We also helped them learn how to express their feelings and needs in a healthy, appropriate way. A food-tasting activity encouraged young children to explore sensations and develop ways to express their feelings about the foods they tried, while building a pyramid from blocks taught patience, cooperation, attention to detail and organized thinking. The children also played a game involving animal names to develop focus, speed and coordination. Meanwhile, the teenagers and young people played tug-of-war to develop balance and cooperation skills.
Sessions for Teachers, VAWG Services for Girls at the Centers
Our VAWG team provided information sessions for girls across the three centers based on “My Safety, My Well-being”—a 12-week structured PSS activity that provides adolescent girls with basic life-skills training to improve their personal and social capabilities. Our introduction sessions for educational and administrative staff addressed how to protect girls against violence, and encouraged the school to take a greater role in providing a safe and supportive environment.
Adults were also included in the sessions. The MHPSS team provided psychological awareness sessions to the centers’ teachers and administrators, who expressed significant interest in mental health issues. We also provided capacity-building sessions for physiotherapists to help them design individualized treatment plans in accordance with WHO standards, using standard operating procedures and SMART goals.
“These kinds of activities were not previously available to these teachers and children,” Mouyad says. “They expressed their happiness with these activities and their desire to repeat them.”