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Long journey of BL on the path of Inclusive Education 

Introduction

In a developing country like Ethiopia excluding children with disabilities from all spheres of life remained the foremost challenge which hinders their overall development. One of the multiple forms that children with disabilities face discrimination is exclusion from formal education due to the attitudes towards the education of children with disabilities. Lack of resources to accommodate the children, is worth mentioning in accessing education. As any low-income country, the Ethiopian Education system and practice largely undermine the reality that children (including children with disabilities) are all different and learn in different ways. This in turn has made most children with disabilities to be excluded from the mainstream education system of the country. 

Berhan Lehetsanat (BL) is one of the few Local Civil Societies which work on the issues of children with disabilities for the last 23 years now and has been witnessing the substantial exclusion of children with disabilities from the formal education system of Ethiopia. Yet, very few encouraging efforts are being observed in creating access to education for children with disabilities mainly in CBR oriented organizations and institutions in Ethiopia. BL Promotes CBR as a strategy for access to education for children with disabilities in collaboration with different stakeholders. BL is, therefore, among such organizations which haveregistered results in creating access to education for children with disabilities. In areas where BL has been implementing CBR oriented projects, discrimination, marginalization and poverty have been prevalent in a way that impede to implement inclusive education where only 4% of children with disabilities attend schools in countries such as in Ethiopia. 

Creating Access to Education for Children with Disabilities 

In addressing access to education for children with disabilities, BL has carried out the followingCommunity Based Rehabilitation Interventions:

- BL has created and developed awareness aimed at avoiding discrimination amongst the society and encouraged the community and local authorities to recognize that CwDs can learn; the needs for and benefit of educating children with disabilities in the local schools and take the responsibility of promoting and support inclusion. 

- Early identification, medical treatment, provision of assistive devices, physiotherapy, and rehabilitation counseling services were made that would enable CwDs to be included in both in their community and schools.

- BL Promotes CBR as a strategy for rehabilitation, access to education, social inclusion, sustainability, etc for children with disabilities in collaboration with different stakeholders such as education sector offices, social affairs offices, heath offices (mainly with Health Extension Workers), hospitals, Project Support Committee (parents and prominent persons), DPOs and CSOs with similar nature.All the involved stakeholders owned the endeavor and its result to sustain.  BL also promotes the importance of access to education for CwDs. This was made through multiple trainings on Special Needs and Inclusive education for teachers, parents, school principals, school supervisors and education personnel to well understand the special needs and diversity of children with disabilities and the possible remedies so that the trainees would facilitate and realize inclusive education in the mainstream schools. In addition, parents of CwDs were trained to make the home environment supportive, encouraging and to have faith in their children. Moreover, school uniforms and education materials have been provided to all poorest of the poor children with disabilities.  

- BL has promoted accessible learning environment. It constructed ramps and adapted toilets as part of removing barriers to attendance thereby CwDs have disability friendly environment. Encouraged and supported schools and education offices to make local primary schools inclusive and accessible and welcoming for all children. What is more, BL made learning materials available in accessible formats (such asBraille books for visually impaired students) to suit the special needs of children with disabilities and the provision supported the children to become successful. 

To sustain the success of the project i.e. to support children with disabilities stay in the school and become successful in their education, among other ways, is supporting parents (preferably mothers) of the children by way of strengthening them financially and technically which is considered to be decisive in running CBR oriented project. Most parents have been benefited from this provision that they have exercised to engage in petty businesses and begun saving money. 

Strategies Adopted 

Community Based Rehabilitation Program remains to be the chief strategy in creating access to education for children with disabilities. Working in partnership and Investing on the system have been the other main strategies to bring about the intended outcomes and to sustain the results achieved throughout the projects implementation holistic program. Similarly working on the issue of inclusive education with a special focus on mainstreaming sign language and braille reading and writing courses   with Hawassa College of Teachers Education enablesthe college to take over the training and professional production aspect so as to promote inclusion in a sustainable manner.

Areas of Focuses  

Creating access to education for children with different types of disabilities is the focus of projects. Provisions of rehabilitation services are at the center of the endeavor BL is committed thereby services enable the children get access to education. 

Outcomes 

The public awareness created and developed encouraged most parents to send their children to near by schools, made the community to better understand about disability and began supporting the inclusive education efforts. The awareness created facilitated the rehabilitation of the identified children to get the intended services. Thus, the health and mobility of number of beneficiaries of the projects have improved there by contributed to social inclusion and attending schools.In an effort to create access to education, over 3371 (Female 1652 and 1719 Male) CwDs are now included and attending in Kindergarten, primary, and secondary schools.Most parents are now in a position to support their children with disabilities in basic stuff than before the interventions as a result of the efforts made to capacitate in financial and technical capacity building interventions. 

Conclusion

In a nutshell, the aforementioned successes have been materialized as a result of CBR strategy employed in most of the projects undertaken by the organization. BL believes such life changing interventions happened in few areas of Ethiopia need to be shared and replicated for those organizations using or will use CBR as strategy in their projects.