Centre’s money running out

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
CALLAN Service St Theresa Special Education Centre is struggling to provide food for about 40 people with special needs living in Chimbu.
Come June, funding from a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has kept the centre going, will dry up.
Josephine Umba, a teacher, said the NGO that has been supporting them is also struggling financially and is cutting down on its support.
“So we are now appealing to the Community Development Youth and Religion Department to support us with funds to provide food for our special children,” she said.
“The NGO will pull out its support to us in June.”
Umba said they looked after children who were deaf, experiencing mentsal illness or have physical disabilities at their boarding school in the Mingende Catholic Mission in Kerowaghi district.
“Parents are not supporting us with food. They just leave them with us and return to their respective villages,” she said.
“We spend about K400 per week to feed the children. We have also reduced the days to engage our community rehabilitation officers. We engaged our officers to go out into the districts in the province and collect data on children living with special needs.
“These officers also do basic physical therapy exercises with the physically disabiled in the villages. They also carry out basic education. They return with data.
“These are the important programmes that we are scaling down.”
Umba said there were nine teachers at the centre who taught intermediate classes, children aged up to six years old. “We also teach grade one to seven classes,” she said.
“And we integrate these children with able children at the Mingende Primary School.”
Umba said they were on the Education Department payroll and received tertiary fee free subsidy. “But we don’t get funds to buy the children’s food. It’s the NGO that supports us with funds to buy food which they are now scaling down,” she said.
“We are now preparing our reports for them to determine if they will continue supporting us.”