CHENNAI: The Rotary Club of Chennai Towers, India (RCCT) has been constantly working in sectors that need development. This year, they stretched their activity list to focus on communication. Extending their collaboration to Antwerpen-Oost, Belgium, the idea is to improve social communication, and self-care, for gaining the ability to manage the behaviour in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
The inauguration ceremony of the ‘Behavior Analysis Workshop’ that highlights Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy on Monday at The Head And Neck Centre & Hospital, Kilpauk, provided insight into how to learn and improve behaviour by using evidence-based ABA principles. Inaugurating the workshop, Dr Ezhilan Naganathan, MLA, said, “We have a lot of division in society due to caste, religion, and so on. The physically challenged and specially-abled are discriminated against for their ailments.
Only after zooming into their lives, do we understand how difficult it is for them to do everyday activities. Also, this discrimination adds to the challenges they face. Their survival, education, and jobs have been an issue. Even though many CSR activities are intended to help the community, most of them are event-based. After one event, the spirit of providing a helping hand will vanish. In such a scenario when RCCT and Antwerpen-Oost came up with an initiative to train people, it will create a better understanding of the people of the community.”
Dr Ezhilan commented that there needs to be a multi-sectional approach to improve communication and understand behaviour. “We should stop the discrimination and treat everyone equally by understanding their needs. Kalaignar Karunanidhi gave the term ‘matruthiranaligal,’ and asked everyone to emphasise that people with disability have talent in other avenues. The Identification of the spheres of talent is vital for development. How objectively and subjectively we are going to identify the talent is the challenge we face. A multi-sectional approach is the solution,” he said.
The workshop also reflects the Rotarian concept of egalitarian values. Rotary is all about connecting people to use whatever is needed in reaching the ultimate goal — to create peace, commented Tony, district governor nominee, 2024-25, RI District 2140 Belgium. Dr Ezhilan concluded the ceremony by reminding us that the Rotary’s involvement in world health cannot be neglected and put forward the need for more health-related activities.
A week-long programme
Satish Jupiter, president, RCCT shared that the training workshop is for six days. The trainers — Yolande Avondroodt, Tony Janssens, Sarah Van Grieken, Elisabeth Thierfeldt, Martine Rymenants — are from Belgium. Bagyalakshmi S will be the local resource personnel. He said that the participants will benefit from the workshop, especially special educators, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and occupational therapists. The collaboration between the Rotary Club of India and Belgium was signed in 2018 when the members visited India.