Time to end the silence?

Last Wednesday the government of South Africa will hold the 1Goal summit calling on the world to make sure that an estimated 72 million children who don’t currently go to primary school get a chance to go to school, just like you and I did.

What’s worrying about 1Goal is that it is silent about disability. In Uganda, where we have worked for 25 years, 87% of all children go to primary school but this figure falls to 25% for disabled children. An estimated 8% of children in Uganda have a disability which means almost 1 million disabled children are missing out on this vital time in their lives.

In Tanzania where the headline data suggests that primary school attendance is up to 98% overall the government admits that less that 1% of disabled children attend – in that case it seems that disabled children, around 1.5m of them, are simply not being counted as children at all.

If you agree with me that it is not good enough that 1Goal is silent about disability and that it risks ‘forgetting about’ disabled children yet again please lend us your support now.  Sign our online petition and make a donation if you are able to support the continuation of our valuable and important work in this area.

But cutting through this gloomy picture there are rays of light. On our website you can read more about Florence, a young woman from Uganda who succeeded in achieving her dreams and overcoming the barriers she experienced as a disabled woman born in a rural village.

Florence will be joining our Kilimanjaro climb on 25th November this year.  If you are interested in getting involved by climbing or supporting the climb in some other way please email me now.