MTN donates to Autism Centre
The mobile telecommunication company, MTN Ghana, on Thursday donated learning materials to the Autism Awareness Care and Training Centre (AACT) as part of its customer service week celebrations.
The items worth GH¢2,500 would support the Centre to train more children suffering from autism.
The week is on the theme, “A Tradition of Service: Our Customers; Our Pride.”
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behaviour.
These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize.
Mr Lawrence Akosen, Senior Manager, Customer Care Division of MTN, said the items, which included books, pencils, erasers, footballs, crayons, plates, cups, as well as MTN souvenirs, would help the Centre to achieve the purpose for which it was established, as it lacked basic learning materials to facilitate learning.
He said as part of the contributions to uplift the image of the company, individual staff members from the department presented various items towards the donation as part of the week-long celebrations.
Mr Akosen said most people were unaware of the problems faced by individuals who tried to contribute towards national development by establishing such institutions to train children with autism.
He noted that it was important for government and various organisations to help such centres with basic educational materials as well as qualified teachers to train the children since most of them needed to be taught on one-on-one basis.
Receiving the materials, Mrs Baaba Enchill, Coordinator of the Centre, said the Centre was established to help parents of children with autism to understand better the disability and to feel that there was a safe place to go for support and help.
She said children with autism lacked basic communication skills and social interaction and had difficulty with social imagination. They were, therefore, stigmatized in the society, she added.
She said promoting awareness and understanding of autism in Ghana and providing training and education services to children with autism in order for them to function more effectively in society were the major objectives of the Centre.
Mrs Enchill said although the school lacked resources in training and remunerating teachers, as well as a place to call their own, it was ready to create and provide a safe place for families to come for understanding, information and education about autism.
She expressed gratitude to MTN for the donation and called on government and other organisations to also support the Centre.
Source: GNA