People and places
All children have a right to education – including those with disabilities Nafisa Baboo shares a personal story and argues the case for inclusive education
Perseverance is the key to success I owe my experiences and successes to education, and to my parents’ sacrifices to ensure I had the best possible education. We were the poorest family in our neighbourhood of Cape Town, which instilled in us the belief that progressing through education would enable a better life. My father,
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who is blind, taught at a special school for the blind where he himself had been a student. However, he is an advocate for inclusive education, where all children with and without disabilities learn in the same classroom. He wanted me to grow up learning the skills needed to succeed in the real world, and insisted I was no different than others and had my own unique talents and abilities. He taught me to be solution-orientated, and engrained in me the belief that perseverance is the key to success. To this day, when sticks and stones cross my path to ensuring that all girls and boys with disabilities across the world receive education, I still sometimes tell myself: through perseverance comes success! Autumn |
Spring
I have a visual impairment and I was educated. I was lucky. The sad truth is that 32 million children with disabilities in developing countries don’t go to school and are denied the chance of making friends, learning how to read and write, and their hope for future employment.
| 2018
