NOTHING SPECIAL – JUST A CLASSMATE

The birth of a child with special needs in the family is accompanied by pain, fear and guilt in most cases. "How to live on?", "What to do?" Parents drop their hands from despair.

In September 2015, with the assistance of the European Union project "Inclusive education for children with special needs in Uzbekistan", 800 children with various types of health disorders were able to attend kindergartens and schools on a par with other peers in five regions of the country.

The results of the project cannot fail to impress. As part of the project 30 pilot schools and kindergartens were launched in Tashkent, Samarkand, Namangan, Urgench and Termez. 26 specialists from five main ministries, as well as the NGOs and other organizations were involved in the elaboration of the National Strategy for inclusive education for 2015-2017.

At the same time, every child has a whole life story, as well as his family, teachers, educators and other people involved in the process of forming inclusive education in Uzbekistan. For most of them, life was divided into "before" and "after" the project.

"My silent son began to communicate, find friends, learn and play with them ...", "Thanks to the teachers of the school, he learned to write, count, sing, draw and much more. And most importantly - he began to communicate with the peers, he has friends ... ". There are thousands of such stories today.

Psychologists say that the children themselves do not categorize their peers with "healthy" and "disabled" people. The main barrier for a "special" group is public opinion and belief. Unfortunately, we do not believe that children with disabilities can attend schools on an equal basis with other children, and an employee with physical disabilities is able to work well and be useful to the society.

That is why public awareness is the main component of the project. And the public supported this idea with enthusiasm. Over 120 articles and other information materials were published in mass media throughout the country, trainings were conducted for 65 journalists from five project regions to cover the issues of inclusive education. Bulletins of the project were disseminated throughout the country in 3 thousand copies.

You ask, what is next? And you will be right: in each project it is important not only the continuation of the started work, but also multiplying of the achieved results. It is necessary to note the essential role of the main partner of the project - the Republican Center for Social Adaptation of Children (RCSAC) which is currently the leading organization for the introduction of inclusive practices in Uzbekistan.

An international conference "Social inclusion: new guidelines for the socialization of children" was organized four months after the end of the project with the participation of the RCSAC.

About 200 Russian and foreign specialists participated in it, including the representatives of ministries and departments of Uzbekistan, international non-governmental organizations, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP, diplomatic corps, as well as the experts from Austria, Belarus, Germany, Israel, Ireland, Spain, Italy , Kazakhstan and Russia.

“When we just launched the project in 2014, we had to make a lot of efforts to convince the people about the need to build inclusive societies. In fact, such a society is a logical continuation of international conventions signed by Uzbekistan. Today, the question of the need for an inclusive society is no longer raised, on the contrary, most of the questions are related to understanding how to implement it correctly”, project manager (2014-2016) Jürgen Becker (Austria) says.

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