God's special children...

Collegue of mine and I went to the Dubai Centre for Special Needs yesterday for a visit as part of a CSR initiative. I’d never been to a special needs school ever in my life before, as I walked in, it looked like any other regular school. 

Nicely painted walls, children’s paintings and smiling staff; nothing really that differentiated this place from any other regular school. That was until Delhna (The school coordinator) started talking about the place. It was a school for autistic, mentally challenged and dyslexic children. It’s one of the oldest school of its kind in UAE and was started way back in the 80s. They have 100+ students currently and have a 1:1 student teacher(assistant) ratio and run majorly on donations. 

What was interesting was that 40% of the children came from deserving families. (deserving family being ,a family which cannot afford AED 30,000 yearly school fees). She went on to add, they’re always on the lookout for donations and are happier if we buy them the stuff and give it rather than just give them cash. We went on to ask ‘what items are you asking ppl for”. They’re basically looking for anything from Art class paints and library books to an additional school bus which is on their wish list. Delhna said ‘Out of these 100+ kids, the youngest in our school is a 4 year old Omar and the oldest is 28 year old Sameera who had her birthday yesterday; but whatever their physical age, mentally they were still children’. 

I could see from the corner of my eye that one of my colleagues had almost finished one tissue box, but my pride refused to get into the act of crying (so I just gulped and bottled up..for now) We discussed how Barclays, Abraaj, Jotun, Emirates Airlines or Jumeirah Hotels were helping the school in various monetary and non montary ways, and there are some fascinating stuff we could get involved with them. (Like how they get free paint from a paint manufacturer, but could not afford to hire workers to paint the place, so some guys from a certain investment bank came over and painted part of the place etc.) She then took us through a guided tour of the school. 

That 30 minute walk back has so many special moments, I may not be able to tell you, which one was more moving - Was it the wonderful painting silently being created by 22yr old Said in the art room , was it the 12 yr old girl bent over a wheel chair, with the Whoopie Goldberg grin who said she wanted to be a news reporter, was it the sight of 4 year old Omar with his shock or unkempt hair hugging my colleague, was it the sight of one child helping another on a wheel chair OR was it the sight of a 3 foot tall Sameera with an angelic smile . I don’t know which one touched me more. 

In these kids I didn’t find any selfishness, I couldn’t find any sorrow, anyone fighting or talking about irrelevant office gossip and worrying grey over it. I do know one thing, these are definitely God’s special gifts to humanity. They’ve been sent down here to show people like us, how fortunate we are and how our worries in life are so much more trivial in comparison.

 

(Names of children have been changed in this blog post on purpose)