Ayati centre for differently-abled children ready in 12 months
State Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene with an invitee at the event.
The Kelaniya University Medical Faculty’s new centre dedicated to children with disabilities will open in a year’s time, it was disclosed last weekend.
On Saturday, December 3 – also World Disability Day -, Ruwan Wijewardene, State Minister of Defence along with several others laid the foundation stone for the Ayati (Hope in Sanskrit) Centre for Children with Disabilities at the faculty premises in Ragama.
Once the Centre comes up, some of the children with disabilities who would be otherwise treated in government hospitals would be treated in this centre, according to Prof (Ms) Nilanthi De Silva, Dean, Faculty of Mediciene, Kelaniya University who is also Chairman of Board of Trustees of the Centre.
The Centre would provide many facilities required to help children with disabilities to achieve their maximum potential and become fully integrated into the society. It would be a 42,000 sq ft state-of-the-art centre spread across a 1.5 acre area in the faculty grounds.
This initiative has been steered by the Department of Disability Studies of the faculty together with Hemas Holdings PLC and has already received support from the government, private sector as well as international agencies.
Addressing the foundation laying ceremony, Prof De Silva said that this would be the only such Centre in Sri Lanka and noted that once in operation it will provide facilities for the initial assessment of children with disabilities and appropriate interventional therapy, basic vocational training and life skills. She noted that it also would provide training and research facility for the undergraduate students and foreign graduates who regularly visit the university.
She said that once the Centre comes to operation with the different facilities under one roof, Ayati would brighten the lives of many parents who have children with disabilities, as well as others who care for them.
Abbas Esufally, Group Director, Hemas Holdings PLC and Deputy Chairperson Ayati Trust Sri Lanka said that their role in this project will be solely to facilitate funding and sponsorship towards the project which will be initially funded by Hemas.
The Centre would be managed by a Board of Trustees, chaired by the Dean, Kelaniya University Faculty of Medicine with support from cricketing legends – Kumar Sangakkara and Roshan Mahanama who also will join a national campaign to create better awareness among the general public of the needs of children with disabilities. With the approval of the Ministry of Defence, the Sri Lanka Navy volunteers to provide manpower for the construction.
Prof. De Silva, when asked about figures of the number of differently-abled children in Sri Lanka, said there was no numbers available and one of the purposes of the Centre is to collect information and statistics which is essential to plan out in the offering of facilities islandwide.