First BSHD NGO Disability Workshop
2015 WORKSHOP Welcome Remarks
By Ms Sharon Tshipa
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Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.
Representative from the Office of the President – Mr Thomas Motingwa, Coordinator, Disability Office whom we bugged last minute.
To our big hearted and selfless speakers – Ms Candice Muir, Dr Ava Avalos, Ms Bonolo Boitshwarelo, Ms Kutlwano Seeletso, and lastly Mrs Sindisiwe Silempo coming all the way from Zimbabwe.
A special thank you goes to those who will massage and sooth our souls today, Peach who needs no introduction, and BSHD’s very own Poet, Morongoa Moselthi.
Our biggest thank you goes to our sponsors from the Angolan Embassy, as well as our workshop attendees; if it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be gathered here this very morning.
It is our pleasure to welcome you this event, if you had not shown interest in this event we wouldn’t be here this morning. Our desire to raise disability awareness, our desire to bring people under one roof to share their experiences in this area, our desire to have parents and teachers share their experiences wouldn’t have been realized. The desire would have been nothing but a distant dream, wishful thinking.
The objective of this workshop is to raise disability awareness in Botswana. It is to bring under one roof those who interact with those with disability, to avail them a platform to share ideas, experiences. It is to rejuvenate and hopefully renew interest amongst us in this area. It is to explore the different types of disabilities (disability etiquette and HIV/AIDS & Disabilities, the status quo and to discuss the future as we see it; informed by our past.
Botswana is relatively small country, with an estimated population of 2 million. From this stipulated number about 96,125 people in the country are said to have some form of disability. The issue of people with disability is one of the most important socio-economic development problems for developing countries such as Botswana because even though there are structures put in place to address these issues they still remain inadequate and poorly implemented.
For many years the topic of disability was a taboo, the society shunned and did not recognise people with disabilities. They were often banished to rural areas or hidden away from the public. Many of them were not allowed to attend school or work. But in recent years there has been a slow but much appreciated effort made by the government to sensitize the society about people with disabilities and the importance of including them in the school system. Botswana is slowly moving towards universal and compulsory education up to secondary level, as well as the option of vocational and technical training.
Despite pushing for inclusive education, these attempts have faced some major setbacks because a lot of the teachers in the schools do not have training in dealing with students with disability. HENCE THIS WORKSHOP, WE THOUGHT. There has not been a proper introduction and implementation of inclusive education into the government school system. In some schools students with disabilities are treated like their normal counterparts as they are taught in the same manner, teachers use the same syllabus and content that they use for other students without modifying it to suit the needs of students with special needs. This has contributed greatly to the number of students with disabilities decreasing in the mainstream system as it does not take their needs into consideration.
On the one hand private institutions have slowly introduced special needs into their schools but most of them cater for specific disabilities only and this still leaves a big gap in the provision of inclusive school within the country. Private schools being private schools are also very pricey hence not every Motswana family can afford to enrol their children in these programs.
Our desire of course as the Botswana Society for Human Development, to carry out this exercise if I should label it as thus, was inspired at the least by what I have just said, but mostly by what we encountered while donating stationery to schools in and outside Gaborone, schools for those with disabilities.
I was only asked to welcome you, lest I exhaust all the points other speakers may want to touch on, let me end here. Wishing you all an informative, enjoyable, productive and fruitful workshop. May this platform be the first of many?
God Bless You. Thank you!!
