Wheelchairs open education frontier for children with disabilities

Epworth, Zimbabwe - Resplendent in a blue tracksuit and matching hat, Define Chinodya sat on her recently acquired wheelchair and socialised with schoolmates during break time. A friend wheeled her around the grounds of Chinamano Primary School in Epworth, a settlement about 25 kilometres southeast of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

The school bell rang, signalling time to return to class for the school’s over 2,500 learners

“Back to class, everyone,” ordered Chenero Maposa, who teaches the special needs class at Chinamano Primary School.

For Define, class happens in a resource unit for Early Childhood Development children with special needs. Inside, colouring sheets, scribbles, picture collages and paper butterflies done by the class’s 21 learners adorn the cream walls and the children immerse themselves in games that included stacking and building blocks, racing toy cars and beating miniature drums.

It’s a new world for the previously stay-at-home 10-year-old who is epileptic and lives with cerebral palsy, a condition that impairs body movement, positioning and coordination and makes it difficult to walk, sit and speak.

Life was bleak for Define before the provision of the wheelchair and subsequent school enrollment, part of a nationwide drive by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) and UNICEF to promote inclusive education.

School was a mirage, and members of the community mocked her for being immobile and unresponsive to communication, said Pedzisai Muskwaka, Define’s unemployed 54-year-old grandmother and caregiver

It has all changed.

Even though her age mates who started school earlier are in Grade 4, Define, her caregivers and teachers are ecstatic that she is now able to join and interact with other children at school, helping her to build life skills.

After initially giving up all hope, Muskwaka is surprised by her granddaughter’s progress.

“She was indifferent, even to greetings. Some neighbors would mock me saying I was taking care of a corpse,” she reminisced. School has turned Define into an active child who enjoys company such that neighbors can longer pass without chatting her up.

“I never imagined Define being in school, let alone teachers introducing her to writing skills,” said Muskwaka, a widow who also takes care of her four children.       

Inclusive education: A commitment to plug the gap

In Zimbabwe, the need to build a non-discriminatory education system that ensures that every child enjoys the right to education regardless of physical or intellectual abilities is glaring.

According to data from the Education Management Information System (EMIS) 2023, 94,883 learners with disabilities, comprising 43,400 girls and 51,488 boys, have access to education at both primary and secondary. This was down from the 141,177, or just 10 percent of children living with disability at the time, recorded in 2023.

Zimbabwe has expressed its commitment to ensuring an inclusive education system through various international and local instruments.

The country is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which stipulates that children with disabilities should “enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child's active participation in the community.”

Zimbabwe’s Constitution enshrines an array of rights for people living with disabilities, aimed at limiting their disadvantages and ensuring they achieve their full potential.

Further, the Education Act provides a legal framework for inclusive education, including advancing the rights of children with disabilities, while the adoption of the comprehensive National Disability Policy (2021) underlines the country’s commitment to a rights-based approach to disability.

 Helping making inclusive education a reality

Funding from the United Kingdom Government and the Global Partnership for Education is helping the MoPSE and UNICEF distribute the assistive devices that include wheelchairs children with disabilities in poor communities, boosting efforts to turn policies into reality.

Chenero Maposa, who teaches the special needs class at Chinamano Primary School in Epworth, where Define is enrolled, noted the changes in Define’s behaviour.

“When she came here we had difficulties because she could not even smile at you. But now we can play. She enjoys playing with other children, she smiles a lot, she seems to be enjoying school,” said Maposa.

Reason Kachambwa, the remedial tutor for Makonde district in Mashonaland West province, about 150 km northwest of Harare, said the programme is instrumental in dismantling a disabling environment that threatens the future of children living with disabilities.

“Make the environment accessible through the use of assistive devices, then disability will not have a chance. Anything becomes possible,” he said.

Inclusive education awakening dreams

Seventy-seven thousand children with disabilities (35,000 girls and 42,000 boys) received assistive devices aimed at addressing a wide range of impairments (visual, hearing, physical), including braille orbit readers, wheelchairs, walking frames and crutches under the programme.

Among the beneficiaries is six-year-old Anesu Ashley Chikaka, one of six pupils from Makonde district who in July received wheelchairs that enabled them to enroll in school.

“I used to feel bad for my mother, she had to carry me on her back everywhere. Now I can freely move with little assistance. I couldn’t go to school, now I can,” she said, adding that both her unemployed parents couldn’t afford one.

From despair, bubbly Ashley feels her dreams are now within reach.

“I want to be a nurse, I feel motivated,” she said, a pencil and book in hand.

The programmes rolled-out by Government, UNICEF and partners for people with disabilities are supported by the Child Protection Fund III and the Government of Sweden.