Georgetown: Government has announced that work is moving apace for the establishment of a training centre for children, adolescents and young adults with special educational needs associated with disabilities.
In this regard, Cabinet on Tuesday last gave the green light to conclude a cooperation and technical assistance agreement between the Caribbean Commuity (Caricom), Cuba’s Education Ministry and the local Foreign Affairs Ministry.
This was announced by Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman at the post-Cabinet briefing on Wednesday. He noted that the agreement will pave the way for the establishment of the training centre.
This project was conceived at the Fourth Caricom/Cuba Summit held in Trinidad and Tobago in 2011 and at the 15th meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations held in Suriname in 2012, where Guyana agreed to undertake the lead role in the creation of the centre.
Consequently, Government established an oversight committee comprising representatives from the Caricom Secretariat and the Ministries of Health, Education, Human Services and Social Security, as well as the National Commission on Disability.
However, this project would require significant technical expertise from Cuba for the project to be successfully implemented. In an interview with Guyana Times back in 2014, Cuban Ambassador to Guyana Julio Cesar Gonzalez Marchante had stated that the special needs centre formed part of a total of nine projects proposed by Cuba that could potentially benefit Caricom countries once they saw them as necessary.
The Ambassador explained that Guyana also had the opportunity to tap into another proposed project in the area of fishing, but remained set on the special needs centre for children and youths.
However, Ambassador Marchante also opined that such a project could benefit Guyana tremendously since many Caribbean countries have expressed the challenges they face in dealing with youth living with disabilities and their ability to access specialised education.
The Cuban Ambassador said the centre in Guyana would be designed and piloted after the Latin American Reference Centre for Special Education in Cuba. The centre there is one of the regional and international entities that provide quality education to children and youth with special needs.
The Guyanese centre would, like its Cuban counterpart, aim to stimulate the development of children and young people with special education needs associated with disabilities.
It would integrate theoretical and methodological issues to guide good practices based on educational attention strategies and methodologies that involved different educational agents such as special education teachers, schools, institutions of the community and family members, so they can contribute to student development.
The centre would take approximately two years, four months to be completed and made functional, once it followed the five-stage implementation and conceptualisation plan proposed by Cuba.
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