by theautismprojectpalestine
An impressive rehabilitation center for physically and mentally disabled children.
A therapist from the center took time for us to answer our questions about the situation in Life Gate. She referred to the speech therapy issue in Life Gate and in Palestine.
About one out of three people with autism has trouble producing speech sounds to effectively communicate with others.
Speech-language pathologists are therapists who specialize in treating language problems and speech disorders. They are a key part of the autism treatment team. Since speech therapy is the treatment of communication disorders, its not possible for foreign speech therapists to work in Palestinian rehabilitation centers. There are only few speech therapists in Palestine who finished their degrees in Jordan or other Arabic speaking countries because the only speech therapy programme in Palestine is quite new and doesn’t yet have an alumni
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We head out first thing in April to Bethlehem University Occupational Therapy Program. Instructors Anan Ghabash, Alia Harb and Hind Zahdah from the program received us. We told them about upcoming internationals seminars and got their attention
Together We have discussed how we should go about planning a curriculum for the participants, and we have considered the variety of different levels. Later on we talked about the domains of learning and approaches.
Alia and Anan recommended visiting Life Gate Rehabilitation Center. Alia also gave us the contact of the new Speech Therapy program at Birzeit University in Ramallah.
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Im back in Jenin after three weeks in Austria and we are already organizing our schedule for April.
BACK TO JENIN
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Meeting with Dachverband Österreichische Autistenhilfe ( Umbrella organization for Autism Austria)
It was another day of having quality conversations and exchanging ideas about raising awareness on Autism Project Palestine. Two great women, remedial teacher Mag Patricia Weibold, and clinical psychologist Mag Carolin Steidl showed their support by participating in my interview with ORF and putting Autism Project Palestine on their website to help us strengthening our network
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INTERVIEW WITH ORF(Austrian national public service broadcaster)
Autism Project Palestine was featured on ORF where I was asked to tell about aspects of mental, psychological and social health in Palestine especially in Jenin. Furthermore, about the aimof the project, steps to financing and plans for project sustainability.
A big thank you goes to ORF for their involvement
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As I discussed with Munther trying to find a cooperation partner for their Occupational Therapy program at Arab American University, I made an appointment with Monika Zettel-Tomenendal, Head of Occupational Therapy Program at Vienna University of Applied Sciences. She was pretty interested in the project and listened the story of the process. She was not really hopeful about an official cooperation between two Universities but she made a great suggestion: We could try to make a contact between ENOTHE and Arab American University.
ENOTHE is The European Network of Occupational Therapy in Higher Education, a part of the Archipelago of the Humanistic Thematic Networks, which deal with different areas and aspects of the Humanistic Arts and Sciences.
BACK TO AUSTRIA
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We spent one month on gathering information about the autism issue in Palestine
Our way to convince others about a problem is to tell stories or provide information about how the problem affects the quality of people’s lives since people need to have an understanding of the human cost of an issue.
A quantitative approach helps you to be very specific and accurate about the level of the problem both in your community, and in other communities as well. It helps you to compare the problem across geographic regions and across periods of time. That’s why I took all Autism Project Palestine memories with me to Austria hoping to find helping hands there.
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Once more in Nablus!
An Najah University/Child Institute (ACI):
a specialized care institute for children with special needs belonging to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at An-Najah National University. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for children of all disabilities through excellence in education, research, health care, advocacy and support
As dr Flefel explained, the institute is developing an extra department for Autism.
We started the meeting with supervisor of the program Dr Sabrina Russo from Italy who’s been living in Palestine for a long time now. Our conversation was mainly about difficulties in diagnosing autism. As a clinical psychologist Sabrina Russo confirmed that there are no psychiatrists or clinical psychologists with experience of diagnosing autism. She also expressed her wish about A new Master’s degree program in Clinical Psychology at An-Najah University. There is unfortunately no academic staff to establish the programme.
After Farah Darwazeh from the department also joined the conversation we made a brainstorming about collaboration between Palestinian autism centers, universities and ACI to host international specialists who want to provide seminars.
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In the afternoon we visited an autism center in Ramallah: Friends of Autistic Children Society. Special Educator Dr Tamer Suhail from Al-Quds Open University welcomed us there and we had a long chat about the difficulties in Autism treatment in Palestine and types of autism therapy. He suggested exploring online art therapy programs. Individuals with autism have innate visual prowess it makes perfect sense to engage them in art activities, be it formally with an art therapist, casually in other classes or at home.
As artists we put it on the top of our to do list!
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Afterwards we had a meeting with Sonia Mushahwar from German House Ramallah. Sonia has an autistic niece and is also trying to reach associations inside and outside of Palestine to get some support. we compared notes and exchanged phone numbers to stay connected
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We continued our search for data in Ramallah. First stop was Palestine Red Crescent Society.
Our meeting with the Head of Department Dr. Fathi Flefel was really helpful. We found out that there is a Child Institute at An Najah University in Nablus which is also focusing on Autism Cases.
Dr Flefel mentioned that there are many centers which are trying to handle autism but staff should be much more qualified.
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Our next stop was Arab American University ‘Occupational Therapy Department‘: one of two “Occupational Therapy” programs in Palestine. We met Munther Teeti, the Coordinator of the Program to ask him about his cooperation and support.
He pointed out a big problem: ‘The students don’t have any practice opportunities after the graduation that’s why its hard to specialize in Autistic Disorders’.
We decided to try creating a partnership with foreign Universities to enable future Palestinian Occupational Therapists gaining experience through an exchange program.
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CINEMA JENIN
Parallel to raising global consciousness, autism project Palestine took another major step by finding its first official cooperation partner: CINEMA JENIN. A german Palestinian non profit organization which is providing a centre of culture and artistic entertainment in Jenin city. CINEMA JENIN showed big interest in the project by supporting us with all their facilities including their beautiful guesthouse.
Dr Lamei Asir, the general manager of the cinema, Marcus Vetter the founder and CINEMA JENIN staff made it possible to expand our network in other Palestinian cities.
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THANK YOU
After only a couple of weeks
Through online networking and many brilliant people who supported us by telling about our project we started to get emails from all over the world. It was our happiest moment so far to read such heartwarming and supportive emails from families with autistic individuals. It gave us much more courage to carry on.
We want to thank one of our supporters Peter Haider, the chairman of Universal Peace Federation Austria who tried to link us with different associations through his distribution list
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During a trip in Nablus we went to see a good friend Hakim Sabbah, who’s running anNGO there. Hakim suggested collecting as much data as possible by visiting ministries of health, red crescents and cooperate with universities which have programs related to Autism Therapy. Collecting data was not as easy as we thought since Ministry of Health in Nablus didn’t have any statistics about the percentage of autistic individuals or number of autism centers.
We ended our trip in Farah Center for Rehabilitation which also welcomes autistic children. Their Occupational Therapist Haya confirmed once more that they are facing difficulties and are willing to get more Workshops and Seminars. After a tiring day we came back to Jenin and prepared an email to Bundesverband – autismus Deutschland to ask for some help.
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We started our journey from the north of Palestine, Jenin, the city we are living in. We found an autism center Tomorrows Center for Autism where we had interviews with families, trainers and shot a short documentary for spreading awareness and trying to fund-raise for the needs of the center. Lovely Jomana Daraghmeh director of the center helped us to have a great shooting atmosphere. We are still in the editing process and going to upload it as soon as we are finished.
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The Autism Project Palestine got started in February 2014 as an Autism Awareness Campaign with the goal of increasing awareness and diagnosis of autism in whole Palestine. Families of children and many therapists often feel isolated by the lack of knowledge, understanding and services.
The Autism Project Palestine is working to empower families and professionals to educate and support individuals with Autism, and related disorders.
The project is being developed in 2 phases
Phase one includes raising awareness through online networking and international cooperation. The goal of phase one is for the families to understand that autism is NOT a disease and NOT caused by anything the parents have or have not done with regards to their child. Families will also learn how important an early diagnosis is for their child to begin an early intervention program.
Phase two will train the professionals, health care workers, and educators on autism.
the autism project palestine 