BEIRUT: At SESOBEL center in Aintoura, Dina meticulously strokes her green paintbrush on a cardboard tree, only pausing to take a picture. “Cheese!” she says with a mischievous grin. Sixteen-year-old Dina has autism. She has been afflicted with the neurodevelopment disorder since birth and has been at SESOBEL for eight years. “Painting is a way to express themselves,” Maggie Mdawar, head of the autism program at SESOBEL, told The Daily Star.
SESOBEL is a social service center for the welfare of children afflicted with motor and intellectual disorders, as well as autism. The center was founded in 1989 and was the first in Lebanon to address issues of autism.
SESOBEL is now in the process of building a new $9 million center adjacent to their current buildings that specializes in treating children with autism. While the center is already under construction, they are still over $3 million short of the funds required to build the structure.
The new center will allow SESOBEL to accept more children and offer a new range of programs.
It will include a family reception for 220 families, an early intervention center for 50 children up to 6 years old, and a daytime center for the support and socialization of 30 young adults.
“The new center will allow us to take more babies and adults,” Fadia Safi, the president of SESOBEL, told The Daily Star. “We are the first ones to make a program for adults.”
Safi stressed the importance of recognizing autism at an early age to combat its impact on children, as well as continuing therapy for autistic patients throughout their lives.
The center will also include rooms for speech, occupational and psychomotor therapy, as well as physiotherapy and psychotherapy.
Safi and Mdawar both highlighted that the center will also include sleeping rooms for the children to stay overnight. An important part of a child’s growth in autism is to become comfortable staying away from home and putting trust in people other than one’s parents.
It also relieves the parents who may have other children that require attention, as having an autistic child may sometimes cause parents to divert attention from their siblings.
SESOBEL has employed a range of techniques in order to raise funds for the new center.
Frida Chammas, a member of the board of directors, organized a fundraising dinner in Dubai a few weeks ago to help raise funds.
With the help of her family, Chammas managed to organize a last-minute fundraiser which was attended by over 500 people, including Lebanese Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Hassan Saad.
At the event, attendees had the option of sponsoring rooms for $20,000-$150,000, and they could also purchase symbolic bricks for $500 or a symbolic wall for $5,000. The event was a huge success and they managed to raise $1 million.
Some of the paintings from SESOBEL’s children were also on offer. “One day I went up to the atelier where they do the paintings ... and I saw a huge painting 2 meters by 2 meters. I said I have to take this painting and [put it up for auction],” Chammas recalled. “Then I thought I’m taking this huge painting, I have to ship it anyway [and] I ended up with 18 paintings.” All the paintings were sold for $50,000.
According to a study conducted last year by the American University of Beirut, the prevalence of autism is found in one in 65 children, which is similar to figures in the United States.
Safi said that there is a lack of structural help for people with autism when they are no longer in their parents’ care.
“We solve one problem, but we don’t solve all the problems,” Safi said. “We prepare them to live autonomously but are not with them after they leave [the center].”
She said that in adulthood there is a need to provide housing, nursing and psychotherapy among other things.
While there is still a lack of cultural understanding in Lebanon on the issue of autism, awareness is growing, thanks to more discussion on autism in film and the media, Safi said.
“They give awareness to let the people see that there are people with autism, and they are in our society, and we have to be embrace them,” Safi said.
No comments:
Post a Comment