Cheshire Disability Services is opening doors for children and youngsters with disabilities across Kenya providing them access to rehabilitation, inclusive education, livelihood skills, and economic empowerment activities. Annually CDSK supports over 4,000 beneficiaries directly and over 20, 000 children with disabilities indirectly.

The organisation achieves its mission to uplift the life quality of people with disabilities regardless of sex, race, colour, and beliefs through four main pillars. The first pillar focuses on rehabilitation and care of children through corrective surgeries, different kinds of therapies and the provision of various assistive devices. The second pillar consists of providing inclusive education by addressing the impairments of children living with disability to a functional state and removing the social barriers. The third focuses on economic empowerment, which is implemented through the Aflatoun International’s methodology on financial literacy and entrepreneurship. And finally, the fourth pillar focuses on lobbying and advocacy.

CDSK and Aflatoun international, funded by Lilaine Fonds and the Rabobank Foundation Employee Fund, developed a non-formal education curriculum for learners with disabilities. By mid-2015, 22 teachers had been trained on the Aflatoun methodology, and the curriculum was introduced in 5 schools for learners with special needs. The programme aims to give children and youngsters Social and Financial Education.

“It’s been an eye opener for me, the learners I never thought would be critical thinkers are now challenging me in my day to day work. As a club, they came up with a tree nursery which they grew seedlings and sold them to the community. Afterwards, they re-used the land to grow vegetables, which now I am buying from them to feed students from other schools.”

— said an enthusiastic teacher from Kiriko, a special school for children with mental challenges.

Other than financial literacy, the Afaltoun club members also learn about a wide range of topics including child personal exploration and rights and responsibilities.

In 2018, CDSK scaled up the Aflatoun programme on Social and Financial Education to 15 primary schools targeting over 600 learners with special needs. Today, 15 school principals have been trained as TOTs, and their goal for 2019 is to have an Aflatoun club in every school.

For more information about Cheshire Disability Services in Kenya, click here. To learn more about Aflatoun’s global social and financial education movement and how you can join us, click this link: aflatoun.org/join/