Learning Helpers LLC, a virtual platform based in the United States, has identified gap in providing education for Persons With Disabilities, PWD, in Nigeria and has expressed interest in providing assistance to close the gap.
At an interactive session with the media, Dr Bimpe Abayomi, of LLC, identified challenges facing children with disabilities and difficulties in providing assistance to them through quality education.
Abayomi, explained that her organisation provides special education useful to support parents, caregivers, government parastatals, schools and teachers of children that may need special education support based on their unique needs.
She said the platform would be of immense benefit and its services can be resourceful to the Nigeria environment which would also impact people and parents of children of Nigeria.
She said her intervention would supports students with special education needs and their parents given that she has put in more than 25 years of experience in the field of Special Education, with main focus in Autism, Specific Learning Disabilities under which you have dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia.
Abayomi, went further to explain that the Mission Statement for Learning Helpers platform, is to meet the educational needs of children and adults who find learning difficult particularly due to disabilities, language barriers and other reasons so that they too can achieve their highest potential in life.
“That’s the main purpose of special education and that is what we do, we want to give every child and every adult the opportunity to achieve” she said.
She said, Learning Helpers are all educational consultants who work to hep one child, one family at a time, so that we can target the unique needs of each child and their parents through individualized programming that will meet the educational needs of each child or adult.
“So that’s the key thing that we do and we are being eligible and we are the best advocate for children through our parent empowerment”.
She said, ” We Are – Special Education Consultants, Special Education Teachers, Private Tutors and ESOL Specialists (for children and adults), Adult Educators, Special Education Supplies/Resource Specialists).”
Citing data to show challenges faced by PWDs, Abayomi noted that UNICEF estimated in 2021 data, that about 240 million children worldwide have a form of disability or the other that negatively impacts their learning in school, and as a result of that they are left behind by their non-disabled peers globally.
She said therefore that her organizations goal is to change the lives and improve the outcomes for all children with disabilities, by providing individualized education in the form of tutoring, interventions and parent support, we make provisions of valuable resources that will make it possible for these population to achieve maximally.
Abayomi, stressed that a child may have a disability and as long as that disability is not impacting the learning outcome of that child in the school setting, that child may not qualify for special education program.
“Like all of us here today,, we have one form of disability or the other but it is not impacting us in a way that we are not able to achieve, we are still able to navigate life without any special education support, Special Education is when the disability of a child or an adult hits the learning and their progress.” she explained.
She urged Nigerian authorities and policy makers to make laws that will facilitate the education of the special person’s through active collaboration and partnerships.