The Sun Also Rises
Tex and pictures by Ishara Jayawardane
desiree Jayakody
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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. |