"I Moved from Dark to light"

   I Moved from Dark to light

ORDA's Ensuring Quality and Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities Program (EQIEP) has an objective of Ensuring Inclusive and quality education for Children with Disabilities in realizing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Goal 4 target 4.5 ensuring equal access and quality inclusive education for children with disabilities. It is funded by CBM Italy and launched in 2019 and stays for 3 years, till 2021 in Kobo woreda. It has been supporting in kind and other schooling accommodations for 53 (F: 25) disability students that enrolled at Robit Boarding school of Kobo woreda, Amhara region. To prevent them from COVID-19 pandemic, students with disability leave the Boarding school and joined their family. Hence, the project supplied different sanitation materials & flour which costs Birr 425,981 to their families.

Among beneficiaries the resident of Kobo woreda Nigusgale kebele student Nigus Tekuar, aged 23, is found. His vision to go to school was blocked while he faced a visual impairment in his 3 age. As a result, he obliged to stay at home while his batch children went to school.

Nigus is from a poor farmer family. They don’t have an ox for farming but have a one hectare farm land. His family led their livelihood through renting of farm land and other means.
He has 7 brothers & sisters, and he is the 4th child for his parent. He got visual impairment in his childhood. As of his parent, when an insect from animals dug entered to his eye; he lost his vision though guys picked out an extraneous organism. His second eye got visual impairment a week after. Due to this, he tried to shoulder the problem related to being visual impaired in rural & pocket area on his childhood. He did not play with a villager children neither had he went to a school. Things were the same while time passed. Later his father took him to Orthodox Church to make him an honorable priest. He learnt spiritual teaching up to Tsome-Digua (in Amharic a higher church education level) for 7 years. But when he heard of about better educational facilities for students with disability in government schools, he left the spiritual education and joined modern education in one government school in kobo town. He rented one room for Birr 150 for living. But he could not get the estimated facilities of students with disability. Due to this, he could not compete equally with a non-blind students and his ambition and aspiration for learning was getting low. The eagerness he had to learn via the support of technologies like braille & voice recorder became unaffordable. Then he was more inclined to be a musician. On this way, he learnt up to grade 2 in government school. Finally his ambition to enter Boarding school achieved when he was grade 3 while he joined Robit Boarding school.

ORDA's Ensuring Quality and Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities Program (EQIEP) received students with deniability, who came from Kobo woreda, in Robit Boarding school. Student Nigus became one of beneficiaries as he fulfilled the project recruitment criteria. The boarding school received students with visual impairment, hearing & physical impairment by fulfilling their educational & living expense.

After he joined the Boarding school, Student Nigus tried to attend his education well. First he got braille & its use training. He became a clever student, and he wrote a destination vision about what to become in the future. The technological support enabled him to equally compete among non-blind students; he got a first rank academic champion.

When he told about the project support;

"The project support helped me to avoid my worries about what to eat and what to wear. I put my mind on my education rather than to think of about my future difficulties. I got a special need service like braille, voice recorder, etc. & equipped with better psychologically make up that made me a clever student. Now my first intention is to score more result than before. I have a vision to be a lawyer and to contribute for the settlement of justice in my country Ethiopia. I feel as I move from dark to light”, he said.

Student Nigus said though the support gained from the project improved his live, he worries about the imbalance perspective of the Community for people with a disability.
"The rural community perspective for us is very low and full of disappointment. I can tell you a good example today occurred. The parent of all students with disability came here in the compound to be donated Corona-19 prevention sanitation material & food. When I entered the compound, I heard a voice from sucked lip which is the sound of being sorrow for someone else in our culture. That was for me. They did this to express their sorrow for my visual impairment, and I do not umbrage over them".

Nigus said if he got a braille which works both in sound and writing, he would score a better result.

Generally the project supports 53 students with disability by employing a guardian to make them the next generation which holds a national responsibility.

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