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WELCOMING APRIL AGAIN!

As time passes by, a New Year emerges accompanied by a new and vibrant inspiration for Nia Foundation to warmly welcome April to commemorate World Autism Awareness Day and the whole month. It is a rejuvenating month for Nia Foundation to renew its covenant to keep on upholding the fundamental rights and freedom of people with autism. It is also a time to reaffirm its commitment to promote the full participation of all people with autism, on this World Autism Awareness Month.

It’s obvious that as a pioneer in the autism sector, Nia Foundation has vigorously been holding a number of campaigns on autism awareness creation in a way that addressed the need to protect the fundamental rights and freedom of people with autism in Ethiopia. And of course, it has made a very huge difference in lives of many and contributed to the diminishing maltreatments, isolation and wrong perception against autism and people in the spectrum lingered in the country as well.

Nia Foundation has eagerly longed ahead of time for this big world event to celebrate it with assortment of programs. This year’s WAAD is somehow more special than that of the previous one because it’s happening on the eve of the commencement of THE NEW CENTER OF EXCELLENCE FOR AUTISM complex construction, which is due to kick off end of April, 2019 this year.

During this very occasion, we tend to proclaim the news about the commencement of the new center of excellence construction to our esteemed audiences and report our achievements we’ve attained so far; since the time the center was established.

A mass walk, music and games and all sorts of fun are among the activities including fund & friend raising for the big project as well. We will also be having ‘Paint-Luck’ meaning every one or every family is supposed to come with a gallon of their favorite color oil paint and a brush. We will share different colors from each other. While we are supporting and celebrating our children with Autism in Ethiopia, we will as well express our love, unity, and feelings through Art, paintings and colors on the project site metal sheet fence.

Different awareness creation events and campaigns will follow during the month. Most importantly, the official construction commencement is yet to be accompanied by leaders and figures of this great nation and of course prominent government seniors from different respective sectors are expected to be part of the inaugural ceremony set to be held on the last week of April. That will mark the end of the Awareness Raising Month.

World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) was unanimously designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2008 to highlight the need to enshrine the fundamental rights and freedom of people with autism and help them improve their lives so that they can lead full and meaningful life. This Year’s World Autism Awareness Month is set to be celebrated by Nia Foundation for the 17th times with a theme “Tegebi Melash Le Autism” and by The United Nations for the 11th times with a theme “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation”. This inculcates the importance of leveraging the use of assistive technologies for persons with autism as a tool in removing the barriers to their full social, economic and political participation in society, and in promoting equality, equity and inclusion.

Contrary to the overall system for persons with autism in our country, in developed countries, having fulfilled the fundamental rights and freedom of persons with autism, they have exceeded in terms of modernizing holistic rehabilitation and educational scenarios with the aid of contemporary technologies. Hence, most importantly the government and all concerned bodies must work together to fill this gap in our context. And this is what Nia Foundation has been working to catch up and move forward along with the rest of the world with regard to modernizing the system and creating a very conducive environment for these blameless persons with autism in our country, Ethiopia.

Individuals with Autism have extreme difficulties in social and communication skills and self-expressions as well. On top of that, they have also difficulty in making sense of the world in the way most people do.

It is conspicuously notable that persons with autism in our country have always been tormented, enchained and kept out of public sight because they are perceived to be possessed by an evil spirit. Though Nia Foundation has fulfilled a number of remarkable accomplishments in terms of addressing the problem by creating a profound awareness about it across the country, it still believes that there is much to be done to address the humanly needs of persons with Autism and related disorders while keeping up with the rest of the world in its advancement of responding to such needs and fill the gap.

Nia aspires to work more not only on the protection of the rights of every person with autism in every corner of the country and on provision of holistic rehabilitation services to all citizens of the country at its disposal but also on the implementation of UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda adopted in 2015 by world leaders. Therefore, in order for Ethiopia to become one of the abiding world countries to this agenda, Nia Foundation is embarking on the construction of State-of-the-art Center of Excellence that can directly or indirectly contribute to the attainment of many of the SDGs including but not limited to Goals 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, and 17 at country level.

The center is designed to be modern in terms of its infrastructure and possess State-of-the-art facilities that will tend to meet the demand of assistive technologies for active participation of persons with autism and will potentially provide them with a variety of essential therapeutic services in a way that can maximize the untapped potentials of the children enrolled into it. It will also have a capacity to serve as a center for study and research to generate local knowledge along with medical care and international conference facilities. The center will prioritize the utilization of indigenous knowledge that can be structured, developed and could also be shared to both the local and international communities.

In order to realize its mission, Nia Foundation has been striving to obtain funds by putting different fundraising modalities in place. “A Day’s Earning for Nia” is one of the strategies hugely deployed to raise funds from every possible donor; from employees, government officials, merchants, maids, shoe shiners, even students. Nia is asking for everyone to donate a single day’s earning/pocket money out of a year to the good cause.

For anyone willing to contribute his/her single day’s earning out of a year, we advise to do so by depositing in their convenient bank as Nia Foundation has accounts in all operational Banks of the country with its name that are believed to be accessible to everyone.

As an asset for Ethiopia, we call upon all concerned to show up and do their part in terms of volunteering and actively involving for the realization of the center of excellence.

The Board of Directors, Management & Staff of the Nia Foundation, Parents, and precious children with Autism at the Joy Center would like to extend our wholehearted gratitude and acknowledge the philanthropic and benevolent individuals, partners, donors and all stakeholders including the media who believed in our work for years and its importance for the benefit of the underserved segments of the community who are in the Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Let Us All Join Hands To Realize The Joy Center Of Excellence For Autism!

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO CELEBRATE WAAD WITH US!