Imagine being a parent of a child with a disability in a country where there are not only an alarming lack of schools to educate your child, but where stigma suggests that your child does not even deserve an education. Our project is desperately in need of monthly sponsors to continue.
$35,000 Donation Goal
Our Mission
In Blantyre, Malawi, thanks to the vision and tireless devotion of one man, Victor Musowa, children with disabilities are receiving high quality education, therapy, and nutritious meals. And it’s not just traditional school-aged children who attend this school. Recognizing the critical role of early intervention therapy, this school, the AKF, admits children as young as four months.
Our Purpose
The origin of the clinic was in response to the great demand for the service in Malawi as a lot of kids with special needs were left unattended. The official name, Able Kids Rehab, came about after looking at the stigma attached to the term disability.
Who We Are
The project is under the umbrella of Devxchange — a network of many volunteers of People Helping People. Able Kids Rehab Clinic was opened in April 2013 by Victor Musowa. The origin of the clinic was in response to the great demand for the service in Malawi as a lot of kids with special needs were left unattended.
Clinic/School
Early education for children with disabilities.
Nutritious Meals
Nutritious meals are provided to children with disabilities.
Therapy
Early intervention Therapy.
Empowering Families
Mothers of children enrolled train mothers of children on waiting list.
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Our Story
Able Kids Rehab & School (Able Kids) is a tiny organization having a big impact throughout the city of Blantyre, Malawi, south east Africa and far beyond. Able Kids was established over 11 years ago and has been impacting the community in a positive and holistic way improving the lives of children with special needs, and the parents who struggle to manage the challenges of supporting a child with exceptionalities.
My name is Gail Hudson and I am the Lead Member for Able Kids Rehab. I have been connected to Able Kids Founder, Victor Musowa since 2005 when he attended Georgian College, in Orillia, Ontario, Canada, where I work. Victor lived with my husband and I in his final semester of his program and had a profound effect on our lives. From the day I met Victor I knew he was a special soul. Charismatic, brilliant, kind, honest, resourceful and patient are just a few of his character traits. Oh, and he is calm. I think his calmness grows out of a familiarity with adversity, real adversity. He assesses the situation, however complicated or devastating it may be, comes up with a workable solution and calmly moves forward. He is a firm believer that things could always be worse, and even when they are bad, he knows they will get better. While Victor had several attractive opportunities to stay here in Canada after he graduated, he had promised to return to Malawi to provide services that were basically non-existent. He left the comforts and ease of Canadian life to work tirelessly in his tiny developing country of Malawi.
Victor returned to Malawi is August of 2006. He was employed for a charity that focused on orphaned children around the world, including Malawi. Victor and a couple of coworker set-up a small clinic within the Blantyre location dedicated to helping community children with special needs. In 2013 the organization decided to abandon the clinic and focus more on the orphans within the organization, the community clinic was closed. The children, the parents, and Victor were left hanging.
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Services provided
Education: we offer pre school education to kids with special needs with a goal of preparing them for public school, this is a very unique service as kids with disabilities don’t have preschool access thereby stopping them to start school on time.
Speech Therapy: we offer intensive speech and language stimulation to facilitate independent communication.
Physiotherapy: we offer intensive muscle and movement stimulation to facilitate mobility and posture.
Occupational Therapy: we offer intensive gross and fine motor stimulation, and training in activities of daily living.
Audiological Assessment: we offer basic hearing screening and assessment and referral for further management.
Specialised Equipment: We design and fabricate locally made adaptive equipment for use in class and at home.
Counselling: we offer parent to parent and therapist parent counselling to offer social support to parents and avoid denial/stigma that can lead to neglect.
Feeding Program: we offer a nutritious breakfast, lunch and snack to all children attending school.
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Needs for the clinic
The needs going forward include expanding the infrastructure of the clinic (e.g. building wells).
We feel need to need to expand the clinic’s reach into the community.
Able Kids Rehab is currently looking to relocate and build a larger school to be able to serve more children and to decrease the size of the wait list. The City of Blantyre has offered a plot of land free of charge for just such a building.
Able Kids also would like to become more securely funded as we are often going from month to month not knowing if they will have enough funding for the next month.
This is a not for profit organization, but they would love to be able to pay all of their staff, currently there are some staff members being paid with sugar and soap.