SPAT Training Kenya: 11-15 January 2021
In the first week of January 2021 the schools in Kenya have reopened after having been closed for almost a year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Also the SPAT project has restarted. For this occasion, head-trainer mr Anne Kuipers traveled from The Netherlands to Kenya where he stayed at the Deaf Centre for a week to help the SPAT team restart the program and provide the next round of training and coaching.
The week started with theory classes about working with groups of children. Then the SPAT team practiced some games and then they went to the schools. They visited and organized SPAT activities on four schools in Kwale: Kinarini Primary School, Kwale Primary, Kwale Deaf, and the school for Mentaly challenged children. It was a nice mix of regular and special education.
Because the SPAT team will go to the schools on a weekly basis now, we provided special t-shirts with the SPAT logo to make them visible for the community. While walking to the villages, many people noticed the shirts and inquired about the group. They were suprised to see a group of Deaf people who were visiting schools to provide sports activities. Some people tag along to observe, out of curiosity.
On Monday and Tuesday we organized SPAT activities at the regular schools Kinarini primary and Kwale primary. To communicate with the hearing children, the Deaf SPATs mainly used hand gestures, and they taught the children some sign language. The children were visibly fascinated and enjoyed learning the signs. They showed a lot of interest in the Deaf SPATs, and that is exactly one of the main aims of the program; to increase positive awareness about deafness among local communities, especially children.
On Wednesday and Thursday the SPAT team visited the Deaf school and the school for Mentaly challenged children in Kwale. At the Deaf school communication wat obviously not a problem at all, everybody communicated in sign language. The deaf children enjoyed the games very much, and were visibly inspired by the deaf SPATs.
But also at the Kwale school for mentally challenged children, communication went smoothly. Because the children are mentally disabled, they respons more to gestures and non verbal communication, than to speech. The interaction between the Deaf SPATs and the children went very well, it was very inspiring to see. We believe Deaf people are very well equipped to work with mentally disabled children, and the SPAT project proves that point!
The coming 6 months the SPAT team will continue to provide sports and games activities at schools in and around Kwale. This is part of their training program. We expect that we can conclude the first phase of the training in June, and from then we can start to employ them as professional SPAT.
To be continued!
