‘By using sport and play to break local stigma around disability, Motivation will ensure all children can go to school’
A British charity helps disabled children in Africa. On International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we urge readers to support this cause
SINCE he was a tiny baby, Jacob’s view of the world consisted for the most part of the inside of his family’s mud and wood hut. Four simple walls, with a tarpaulin roof, Jacob didn’t go to school and stayed with his mother and baby sister in a refugee camp in the northern Gulu region of Uganda.
When he did venture outside, he was excluded and treated with suspicion and contempt – even by relatives. Jacob, now
12, was born with cerebral palsy and is among 2.5 million children with disabilities in Uganda.
A 2014 Unicef report found only nine per cent of disabled Ugandan children attend primary school. This drops to six per cent for secondary school, compared with a national average of 92 per cent. There is a huge stigma around disability in Africa so many are hidden by their families.
“I felt rejected by my parents, and most of the time I spent at home playing with my little sister,” says Jacob. “As boys my age were at school, I felt my parents didn’t like me. The children I know are not in school, they are kept at home. Two of them who can’t walk have no wheelchairs. They crawl on the ground and sometimes they are carried by their parents.” This year, however, Jacob is attending boarding school. Thanks to an initiative by British charity, Motivation, many more children will have the chance of an education.
Under its motto “freedom through mobility”, Motivation helps children go to school by providing wheelchairs that can negotiate the potholes, unpaved roads, open drains and rough paths in rural areas. The charity’s wheelchairs are