The Sun Also Rises

Tex and pictures by Ishara Jayawardane

A three mile charity run commencing and returning back to Independence Square is planned to be held on October 22 in order to create awareness on AUTISM and to raise funds for the introduction of the Son-Rise Program that will benefit children with autism in Sri Lanka.

This is a project done by ‘Colour My World’ which is a non-profit charitable organization.

There are about 40,000 children Sri Lanka diagnosed for autism. There are no statistics readily available unlike other countries such as US and UK. To do a proper diagnoses if your child has autism or not, you need people who are qualified. When a parent suspects there is something wrong with their child, they must first go and see a paediatrician and/or a child psychiatrist.

Autism affects 1 in 110 children and when you have five, four of them are boys. Because of ignorance concerning this disability most autistic children are labelled ‘bad children’ and parents are called ‘bad parents’. When everyone is aware of autism, it is easier for the child and society.

“We started as volunteers in Desiree Jayakody’s Son-Rise Program to help her son who has autism. It’s only then that we realized that there is not enough awareness on Autism in Sri Lanka. That is when we started Colour My World to focus on children with special needs. Our first project is AUTISM; the main goal of our Autism Awareness Charity Run is to create and raise awareness on Autism. We also aim to raise funds to bring a child facilitator trained in Son-Rise down from the United States to provide additional training and input,” Said President Colour my World, Fahmy Rahman

Desiree Jayakody is one of the key figures in the Son-rise Project. Coming from Holland three and a half years ago she started her own private school for Autism called The Dolphins.

“Trying to help my son, I faced many difficulties because of limited awareness and support. Due to the numerous challenges in running the school after one and a half years, I decided to start our home-based program from the Autism Treatment Centre of America called Son-Rise. The program is run by parents with the help of volunteers. That is when Fahmy and Giselle came into our program and volunteered for my son. Together we started Colour My World to do this first event on AUTISM,” said Desiree Jayakody.

As Colour My World will focus on other special needs as well, Desiree Jayakody and Shiranthi Perera, as parents with a child with Autism and both running Son-Rise programs have taken steps to have The Dolphins to focus only on Autism. With our parent support group we seek to connect with other parents who have children with autism and provide support to each other. Our goal for 2012 is to bring the Son-Rise Program to Sri Lanka.

“Son-Rise is a very effective way to help children with Autism, because that is the program that we volunteered for. We saw how much Timothy (Desiree’s child) was improving from it and we were inspired to do this whole event because of him. There isn’t anything like the Son-Rise program in Sri Lanka. I am in the field of psychology and a lot of people in this field say we don’t know enough about autism and lots of parents say; where do we go, what do we do? There is no known medical cure for autism. For Desiree, she was able to go to the US, but there are so many parents in Sri Lanka who don’t have the opportunity to go there. Bringing Son-Rise to Sri Lanka will be a great opportunity for other parents to start their own home-based program to help their own child” said Vice President of Colour My World, Giselle Dass.

Shortly after returning from the US in 2010, Desiree and Shiranthi made inquiries about the Autism Treatment Centre of America conducting their foundation course in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka will be the hosting country for Asia, as there will be many parents coming from neighbouring countries like India, Malaysia, Australia, Maldives, Singapore.

The Son-Rise program is a way of helping your child. An autistic child is in his/her own world. The Son-Rise program helps to create a bridge between the child’s world and our world.

It is an opportunity for parents to connect with their child in a way that is comfortable to the child. Every parent works with his or her own child with the help of volunteers. By joining the child in his or her own world, you build a connection and by building that connection we can help the child to communicate with us at his pace. Son-Rise initially focuses on social skills.

When a certain level of proficiency is reached preparation for academic skills mainstream school is introduced. You can’t teach a child academic skills if he doesn’t know how to communicate with you or can’t look at you. The Son-Rise Program can be used as long as required for any age.

We believe in Son-Rise because there are significant improvements in the child. It is not the only way to help children, there are other ways. But we believe in this program because we have found it the most effective way for us to help our child. The Dolphins will arrange a work-shop done by the Child Facilitator where parents, caregivers and professionals will get an introduction of the Son-Rise program. Also video clips of the Child Facilitator working with the children in Sri Lanka who are already following this program in their homes will be shared.