All they need is a chance
People living with disabilities face a lot of challenges. The people around them are also affected by the stigma and suf-fer many inconveniences as a result.
For example, many men leave their wives because they have physically challenged children.
This is a sad yet common phenomenon that is largely a result of people’s lack of knowledge about children living with disabilities.
People need to be educated about these children before more of them are abandoned and or looked down upon by society.
Zimbabwe is a very friendly nation and can easily cope with whatever adjustments the country needs to make to serve the interests of children living with disabilities the same way other children are served.
Parents and guardians of children living with disabilities have a huge role to play to ensure that their children have got opportunities to showcase their abilities and not disabilities but they need the assistance of the rest of the country.
Most children living with disabilities have got specific disabilities that do not render them useless but the mistake some parents, schools and society as a whole makes is rendering these children disabled across all spectrums.
As a result, an unfortunate over 25 percent of children living with disabilities in Zimbabwe never attend school. Their parents and or guardians wrongly assume that, because their children have a physical impairment, they are unable to do everything else.
And by choosing not to send them to school, these parents are strengthening their wrong belief that their children cannot do anything. If a child, whether they are living with a disability or not, does not go to school, chances are high that such a child will be less useful in society.
So it is the child’s lack of education that renders them useless and not their apparent physical challenges.
The result is a society of children living with disabilities that are incapacitated to make something out of their lives and parents that are contributing to the anomaly.
Society, as a result, is convinced that children living with disabilities are incapable of making something out of their lives when it is society that has done nothing to help them make it in life.
The schools we have, public institutions, homes . . . all have very little or nothing for children living with disabilities. As a result, it is expensive to cater for the needs of these children as they are special needs. Parents’ tendency to hide their children living with disabilities from society because they are either ashamed of them or think they have no role to play in society is actually a norm in many communities.
But history has evidence that disabled people can have many talents that can help them in life. Let us never underes-timate the abilities of children living with disabilities. All they need is a chance to explore their options, like other children.