If a teacher wants to work with children with disabilities, he/she will find a method

Passport name of 20-year-old Narek is Arayik but he loves when they call him Narek, because that is how his lovely grandmother used to call him, who lives in the United States. Now Narek has an opportunity to visit her in USA.

“Narek’s photos were exhibited at the US Embassy; he was also invited to the place of former US Ambassador to Armenia John Heffern, who had asked him for what he drams about. Narek told him that he was eager to see his grandmother, – says president of non-governmental organization “We can” protecting children, young people with disabilities and their families.

The organization was founded in 2013 within the framework of the program “Giving voice to disability”. The peculiarity of the organization is that its founders are people with disabilities or their parents.

“Our purpose is to help people with disabilities to raise their problems themselves. We are engaged in advocacy, we try to discover abilities of people with mental disability, to formulate positive attitude of society towards them, to inform parents about the right of children of getting education, employment.

NGO collaborates with public schools; they hold “Lessons of kindness” with pupils of higher classes, within the framework of which they discuss problems of people with disabilities, within the frame of which they discuss problems of people with disabilities, talk about ethics and right to practice proper vocabulary.

“We work with 15-16-year-old children, as they are our future decision-makers, and they will take received information and experience with them to future life”.

According to her, it is not obligatory to have financial support in order to deal with advocacy: “As we are the bearers of the problem, we do not expect to have any program for working, we always work”.

Full text in Armenian