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TASK is helping to break down damaging myths with "The Little Conquerors", a unique project providing support for disabled children and their families.

Each week a group of mothers and their disabled children meet for education, mutual support, and rehabilitation.

This is an effective way to teach the family simple physiotherapy and care giving skills in an environment of care and support. Experienced families welcome newcomers and encourage them with stories about their own children's progress in the program.

Medical and physiotherapy care

All disabled children in "The Little Conquerors" receive appropriate medical care according to their condition. For example, a large number of children with epilepsy are learning to live with the major challenges of their disease with medical assistance and support from Servants.

Breakthroughs with local schools

Servants has also had some major breakthroughs with local schools who were previously unwilling and unable to accept disabled children. By assisting them to build ramps and other facilities for disabled children we are now at the stage where several of the children in the program are able to attend school on a regular basis.  For those children who are refused acceptance to local schools we opened Sunrise School.

Sunrise School

The Sunrise school officially opened August 4, 2003.  We began with 8 students with disabilities –ViRiak, Chay, Makara, SivFang, and SukNee who have Cerebral Palsy; Mumchen who has a brittle bone disease, Ploy who has an intellectual disability, and Thao who had Polio and now walks with braces.   

One of the central reasons we opened this school was to be an encouragement to the families of these children and the children themselves.  Some families have tried to place their child in other schools, but most schools are reluctant to accept children with disabilities—especially if they are not able to walk or take care of themselves hygienically.  Other students have not attended local schools because they lack confidence, some have missed so much school because of their disability that they are too far behind, and some simply because their disability is so severe that other schools will not take them. 

Socially, the children are becoming very comfortable with each other, and all are enjoying coming to school. The teachers focus on teaching the Khmer alphabet, writing the date, numbers, and simple mathematics.   We have assessed each child and written monthly goals for them academically as well as personal and hygienic goals.  

We have added a second class to our school in the afternoons which is for teenagers and young adults who have Epilepsy. Many children with epilepsy have been kept at home by their parents for fear of injury from seizures and teasing by other children. For some children even once seizures are controlled by medication, it takes time for parents to feel confident that the child will be safe at school and then for some they are then too old.  The purpose of this class will be to teach them basic literacy and life skills.   

One little conqueror's story

Ewan (8) has cerebral palsy. He suffers from a debilitating disease which traps his excellent brain inside a body that won't do what he wants it to. When we met Ewan he couldn't sit up or feed himself, let alone stand up and walk around. He faced a bleak future, lying in the corner of the shack where he lives with his two sisters and parents with little chance of reaching his full potential.

Ewan joined our Little Conquerors program and made remarkable progress. Through a mixture of physiotherapy, encouragement and perseverance, Ewan has now learned to walk, feed himself and even go to the toilet by himself. Ewan is now asking to go to a regular school, so we have begun teaching him once a week at his home. Who knows what the future holds now!