WHILE the word "pride" seems to be a word associated to our friends in the LGBT community, today I would like to introduce an organization who calls themselves as P.R.I.D.E, who works on an advocacy, which I think our fellow Kagay-anons and faithful readers can be of help by supporting the organization's cause.
According to one of their active members and faculty of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, Dr. Elinesa Abamonga, PRIDE is an acronym for Poverty Reduction and Integrity Development Education, which aims to provide free training to parents, particularly mothers, of children with special needs. Their training includes rug and accessory making, massage therapy and the like. These activities allow mothers, in partnership with the Social Work Program of Lourdes College and CAPEDFA or the Cagayan de Oro People with Disabilities Federation Association with the intention of making the mothers productive for their children with special needs.
Money seems to be the usual concern encountered by parents with special needs. Most parents, especially mothers do not have fares to attend free sessions for their children nor afford to buy simple learning materials for their children among other things. Thus, equipping mothers can make mother be productive and earn money even if activities are just home-based. Likewise, these activities can prevent mothers to rely from dole-outs, which most of the times hinder them from using their capacity to make a difference to their family's life.
Livelihood is just one of the many directions in the organization because of the organization's desire to use their skills for productive economic gain. Thus, more than this again, the organization is also able to boost the morale of the mothers responding to uplifting their dignity as providers and supportive parents to their children.
While poverty alleviation is the priority of the organization, they also wish to provide help to the parents in coordination with the various government and non-government organizations to correct misconceptions and develop better understanding as regards the conditions of their children. They hope that through the initiatives of the organization, parents would have the capacity to provide for the basic needs of their kids and allow them to develop effective parenting skills.
Our City Government has been implementing various initiatives for children with special needs. However the regularity of the promulgation of this program is a challenge especially when efforts are not well planned and not unified. Thus the organization seems to respond to this gap as they are flexible in working according to the schedule of the mothers who are interested to join in the program.
Writing this article makes me hope for three things here. One, I am hoping that parents, rather than being in denial, would have the openness to better respond to their kids needs so that better and immediate and appropriate interventions may be given to them. Second, I hope that the various sectors of the society can collaboratively work together so that initiatives can be more unified and be more effective especially to this particular sector in our society. Lastly, considering everything else, I am hoping that at the very least, may you have the heart and generosity to help PRIDE to bring pride to parents with special needs through their initiatives.