Teacher Union Launches Drive to Support Poor Learners with Disabilities

Thousands of vulnerable children with disabilities who have long been overlooked by mainstream sponsorship programmes are set to receive a lifeline through a new foundation launched by the Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers (KUSNET) to support their education and welfare.

The KUSNET Foundation will mobilise resources from corporate partners, well-wishers and contributions from union members to support needy learners with special needs and disabilities.

Many households raising children with disabilities continue to struggle to afford assistive devices, transport, internet access and learning materials, with poverty remaining one of the biggest barriers to education.

KUSNET Foundation Secretary Gabriel Nderi said the initiative was inspired by teachers’ experiences in special schools, where they regularly encounter learners lacking basic necessities such as school uniforms, beddings and food.

“Our members work with learners whose needs we cannot wish away. For years, teachers have been assisting vulnerable learners from their own pockets, but we realised that if this support is organised through a structured foundation, we can reach many more children,” he said.

The foundation has an independent leadership and governance structure, separate from the union, whose mandate remains the advocacy of labour issues affecting special needs educators.

He noted many scholarship and sponsorship programmes primarily target bright learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, inadvertently locking out children with disabilities, particularly those with learning difficulties.

“You rarely find banks and other organisations sponsoring a child with a mild intellectual disability, dyslexia or dysgraphia because they are looking for top academic grades. Our focus is on the child who is both needy and living with a disability,” he said.

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that affects reading, spelling and decoding words, while dysgraphia affects writing, handwriting and the ability to organise thoughts on paper.

Mr Nderi said the foundation’s primary beneficiaries will be vulnerable learners with special needs, especially those facing multiple disadvantages.

“Being vulnerable is one challenge, but being vulnerable and having a disability presents even greater barriers. Those are the children we want to prioritise,” he said.

To ensure accountability, the foundation has established a governance structure comprising a board, trustees, a chairperson, vice-chairperson and treasurer, with all projects subject to board approval before implementation.

Beyond providing direct support, the foundation will spend its first year conducting research to establish reliable data on children with disabilities across the country, including the number of learners with physical, visual, intellectual and other disabilities.

Lack of comprehensive data has hampered targeted interventions for learners with special needs.

KUSNET becomes the first of Kenya’s three teachers’ unions to establish a foundation dedicated to supporting vulnerable learners with special needs and disabilities.

ligadwah@businessdayafrica.org