The Liztino Centre for Children with Special Needs, organisers of the ‘Autism Awareness Creation through Cycling with Young Phil’ as part of the global Autism Day celebrations has held a seminar at the Aburi Girls Senior High School (SHS) in the Eastern region on Sunday.
The event was aimed at educating students on autism, and the need to engage in sports or physical activities to manage the childhood disorder.
It was also to encourage schools and communities to accept autistic children and provide them with the platform to engage in sports and discover their full potentials.
The founder of the Centre, Mrs Angel Bertino, the mother of Africa’s first autistic cyclist, Young Phil Bertino, said the engagement was very important as students needed to be enlightened to carry out the message to their homes and communities.
She said that as the world celebrated the World Autism Day, it was important for Ghanaians to be reminded on the need to support autism children to become the best they could especially in sports.
Young Phil, she said, was a typical example of utilising sports to expose autism children to society to become better and contribute to national development.
The School Chaplain, Rev. Edwin Buertey, said the engagement was essential as it exposes them to the importance to support autism children to become better as a church, school and community as a whole.
“The Young Phil story is an inspiration to all as it makes us aware that children with autism could do well in sports when given the needed support,” he stressed.
He thanked the Liztino team for the support and called for more of such engagements and attempts to modify the education system to become autism friendly.
The Assistant Headmistress, Administration at Aburi Girls described the engagement as an eye opener because they understood what was involved in working with autism children.
She said the school would sustain the engagement and encouraged the students not to discriminate against children with autism.
BY MICHAEL D. ABAYATEYE
