 This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Welcome to Youth in Action, where young people are doing immense work to bring change into society. In today's program, we have Farida Sart, the director of Winam Child Without Limit. Quite an interesting title. Let's hear more. Farida, Karibu Sana to Youth in Action. Tell us a bit about yourself. What is it that you do? Okay. I'm Farida Sart from Winam Child Without Limit. I'm a teacher, a special needs teacher. I'm a psychologist and a functional assessor. These are people who assess children from the IAC Center and place them in schools. Yeah, so I do that much and I'm also the director and founder of Winam Child Without Limit, currently founder of Autism Center called Winam Autism Center. I'm a passionate person about disability. Yeah. So let's talk about Winam Child Without Limit. What is it about and what do you do there? Winam Child Without Limit is a young organization that was brought about in support of parents, all caregivers of special needs kids and kids who are going through special needs issues. We are based in Mambuleo. That is where our office used to be. Currently, we have moved to Tomboyah. That is where we support parents from. We work in Kisumu County. That is how we are registered to work in Kisumu County. But currently, we focus within the town. We've not moved outside because of some reasons here or there. But we support all the parents from those who call to those who visit. Yeah. And so what inspired you to do this kind of work? The inspiration came about when I was volunteering after my attachment in Joyland Assessment Center. I decided to volunteer there from 2017. Then being that after assessment, children need to be followed up and checked how they are going in school. Being that the work is too much in the assessment center, sometimes they don't find time to visit and follow up. So I offered myself to be doing that, following up and supporting the parents. I created a WhatsApp group to follow up on these with the parents. But now I got so interested so much on autism because I realized it's like a forgotten area. Yeah. But we support all the parents and the inspiration came from the fact that children are taken to school and left with the school. Yes. You focus more on autism. Is there a specific reason why you decided instead of this other kind of special need, I will choose autism? One thing that pushed me on autism is the fact that autism is the only thing that does not have a school in Kisumu County. It's the only disability that does not have a school in Kisumu County because the government feels that they should be included. But even as the inclusion coming, some of the kids who are autistic don't benefit so much from inclusion. Though we just encourage that they are included for socialization so much. So you find that physical disability, they have a school, HMH have a school, HI they have a school, and they visually impaired also have a school in Kisumu County, but not autism. Yeah. So that is why I found myself just getting interested and focusing on autism. And again, it's something that many people don't know about autism. What is this autism? Yeah. So it's touched us and I realized that more awareness should be created in our county and as a whole in western region. You've talked about MH, HI, what are those? Okay. MH means mentally handicapped school. Those are intellectually disabled kids. HI is hearing impairment schools. Yeah. We have all of them in Kisumu. We have Luderan school for the mentally handicapped. We have hearing impairment school. That is Masenu school for the yeah. Yes. And so what kind of activities do you do at Winam Child Without Limit? At Winam Child Without Limit, we have four main thematic areas. That is assessment, placements and follow-ups for children with special needs and their parents and follow-up on them. We also do psychological support and cancelling for the same parents. We create awareness on disabilities and we also do positivity in living. This means we encourage the society as a whole to live positive with persons with disability. Yeah. And disability has attracted mind sensitization and awareness over time but in your profile you still say that the people living with disability are still marginalized. Would you talk more about that? This is because like when some of them are still categorized as curses in families. So that is why we say that they are still marginalized and again like autism is very difficult and people don't understand it so well. So even when they assume they are in the hospital nobody understands that they are autistic. Many people will say that they are brought up. They are not well brought up. Yeah. So that is the reason why we saw it and we think that marginalization is still there and people living with disability and their families are still neglected. Yes. You speak of people not understanding what autism is. So can you tell us what is autism spectrum disorder and how should we understand it as a community? Autism spectrum disorder is an inclusive name for disability, different disability. It is a spectrum. It is something that brings other disabilities within one. So autism happens to one of them. It's a neurological disability that affects most of socialization and communication in a child. Yeah. And when you meet a autistic child who is also having hyperactivity, ADHD, attention deficit and the hyperactivity disorder, it is not easy to understand them because they will be jumpy, destructive and not talking. So as a new person you will think that the child is not brought up well while the child is on the spectrum. The spectrum here means they behave differently. Each autistic child behave differently and whatever works for one autistic child there is no surety that it will work for the other. Each and every one of them should be treated differently. Yes. That is why it is a spectrum and it is a lifelong condition. It is not a disease. It is not an hearable thing that people can get from talking or socializing. It is a condition and a lifelong one. Yes. And who do you aim to target with your message on autism spectrum disorder? My aim is the society. Everybody should know about autism because once the society knows about it it will be easier for the autistic parents, autistic caregivers, autistic family to work this journey easily. You know when example when HIV came up it was so difficult and everybody felt that it is a disease that can be just begotten even by talking with the person with HIV positive. But through awareness and support it is something that currently everybody lives comfortably. That is what should happen with autism. It is not airborne. It is just a condition that when awareness is created well everybody will understand and even if you meet an autistic child you will not say they are mad. Autistic adults when trained well from childhood can work like me and you, can work regularly like anybody. But because they are not trained, they are neglected, most of them are in closed doors. Awareness should help on this. Yes. Nice. Speaking of awareness, in 2022 the first World Autism Awareness Day was held in Kistumu County and I believe you were part of that journey. Tell us how it was. It was a challenging journey but we thank God it happened. We thought it twice being that it is the first organization that I've thought about autism strongly. So we thought that maybe holding this day and celebrating autistic persons in Kisumu for the first time we'll encourage people to start and getting as interested in knowing what autism really is. So it was a challenge but people came up and supported especially the county government, health department. They gave us a chance to do the awareness and sensitization in the hospitals. We did that in five sub-county hospitals with their support and the National Council for Persons with Disability support and we tried and got attention of a few people but we believe that this year will be different. So you're planning to do another one this year? Exactly. We would wish that it happens every year just the way it is celebrated in Nairobi and any other area. Autism should be and must be celebrated even in Kisumu County so that everybody should know. Like when we did that in 2022, everybody by standards were asking what is this autism? What is this? So it should be something that everybody knows so that even when we celebrate it everybody should be interested to come and celebrate and see the kids because in 2022 we have one of the kids there who was trying to sing and the other was just attended with their families. And what kind of aid do you offer as an organization to maybe parents with kids who have autism? What we do so much is one after these kids are admitted in schools we follow up the kids in these schools. We help the teachers to work the journey with the kids because even the teachers get overwhelmed. One hyperactive autistic kids is not easy to manage. Assume you want to manage the one hyperactive autistic kids plus other regular kids and you're one teacher. So we work with them, we encourage them, we visit these schools to see the progress of these kids. Some of them joined when they could not do anything. Currently they can write which is an achievement to us. Some of them joined when they could not sit in class. Currently they can sit and follow the routine well. So we support the kids through education visits and support on the teacher. Then we also do psychosocial support for the parents. We meet with the parents every month to discuss their journey and to work with them. Sometimes we invite psychologists to talk to them and guide them on how to manage their stress and trauma and it has been a journey with them. Those who have at least accepted and able to work this journey are very comfortable talking about their case and autism, which is a plus to us. As an organization we also manage in 2022 to bring one of the children to participate in Mr. and Miss Kenya, Kisumu County, which was also a plus to us. We are happy that the organizers, which is angels or sunsets organization accepted to register one of us and she participated and it was a plus to us to bring autism to light. So we try to connect them with any agency, any organization, any schools that can support autism. Speaking of bringing autism to light, have you seen any significant change since you started doing this work until now? Exactly. We've seen a lot of changes, a lot of connections. Many parents are currently coming out to ask what should I do, how should I do this and we connect them with many people. It has been a great journey because we see that many parents are coming out currently to work the journey and to take their kids to school, which was not there before. Yeah. And do you have people supporting your movement or partners that you're working with at Wynnum Child Growth Limit? Okay. Currently I have volunteers that I work with. We don't have any funding. We use our personal funds to work the journey with the parents. Wherever we need any support we have to what needs financial support. We have to dig deep into our own pockets and support what is needed, but we believe that we will get support. But in awareness, I think the Department of Health has really come handy to help us in creating awareness. Yes. What kinds of challenges have you encountered doing this work or how have you gone about it? Challenges are a lot. There is no journey that can be worked without a challenge and challenges need to make you strong. First is acceptance from the parents. It's not easy to accept that. Any other disability like physical, it's easy because you see, you will not deny. Autism being a neurological thing, it's not easy because some of them just seems very okay, but they have autistic characteristics. So to bring the parent to understand and accept that my child is autistic, it is a journey. And some of them you find that they insist that my child has to be in a regular school, my child has to write, my child has to read, which to some autistic kids, it's not easy for them to do those things, but it's a journey we are working with them. It's a big challenge for acceptance and we understand that acceptance is not easy to everybody. The second challenge is maybe the financial constraints because sometimes we feel that we need a place for them so that when they are brought there, they can do what they are interested in, not what we are interested in. Yeah, it has been a challenge. Then another challenge is just the societal, I think, societal unawareness. People are not aware that autism exists. You find a parent going to the hospital and everybody just wonders, things like that, which to the parent it's an attack. So if it's possible that the society could understand that autism is a condition and it's a difficult journey to the autistic parents or autistic caregiver, it can be an easier journey than it is today. Yeah. Apart from society, how has your, have your friends and family taken the kind of work that you do? Okay, there are some who are okay, there are some who are not okay because everybody will say that these things easy for them to do, things like that, which is normal. But again, my family has been supportive. My husband has been very supportive because he knows that it is a passion. Yeah, I've been dealing with from 2017. I got interested. He has been supportive. My mom has been supportive. My friends, some of them are supportive, some are not. Yeah, so the ones who are supportive are working the journey with me. They can sometimes support also when I call for financial support. They can also support. They can also volunteer at times. Yeah. Where do you plan to take Winam child without limit in the near future? Okay, the dream of Winam is to have an autistic model or a model that can accommodate special needs child that when they come in, they can be nurtured overly. We will not wish to see a child coming out of a primary school without any scale. So the dream of Winam is to have a model where if a child comes out, they have something in hand be it a carpentry, be it beauty, be it electronics, be it engineering, because we believe that most autistic kids are very bright. The only challenge is tapping on the on their skills. Yeah, if they are in regular schools, they don't fit because they don't understand why why do I need right. But you will find one building blocks. When you just look at why the child is building blocks, you might find that the child is interested in building or construction. So you tap on that. You don't fix them to do what you want them to do. So the dream of Winam child without limit is to have a model that can hold all the children with special needs, especially autistic child. Yes. Here in your speak of autism, there might be a parent out there who needs help with an autistic child. How can they find you? Currently, we are situated in Tomboy and we are trying to come up with an autistic center where only autistic kids will come in for support. We have started admitting a few for this support to guide the parents on what to do with the autistic kids. We are situated in Tomboy next to former women rents office. Some of them can reach us through our office number which is 0728840956 and they will be guided on what to do or how to reach us. We are doing such amazing work and impactful work. There may be a young person out there who wants to start something but they do not know how to do it. What can you tell them? Everything we do is a journey. What we need to be encouraged with is that we need to start. Starting is the challenge. If you are interested in doing something, just make a step of starting. Once you make a step of starting, you will walk the journey. Those who still don't know might come to our organization to volunteer so that they know how the journey can be walked. Thank you so much Farida. We have learnt a lot about autism and I personally will take this into consideration. You have heard it. Autism is not a curse. It is a disorder that needs understanding and much care. For a young person who needs to start something, as she has said, it is about starting. When you start, you will get the follow-through to go on with your plans. This has been Youth in Action. I am Nyangweseo Gremis. See you next time.