Making ‘Beyond dreams’ a reality for special children
They walked and they talked, this ‘Royal College Group of 81 Walkers’ and as they gained kilometres around Independence Square in Colombo every Saturday morning, they zeroed-in on what they could do for Sri Lanka.
With a dire need of the country’s special young ones being a one-stop, state-of-the-art Centre for Autism and Neuro-divergence at the premier Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) for Children, Colombo, this is what the walkers have picked up. They are looking to raise around Rs. 60 million to construct this centre, while hoping to secure the voluntary shramaya of ever-willing navy personnel.
From the Yala National Park, Sri Lanka
As many of the group are wildlife enthusiasts and keen naturalists with numerous forays into the wilds not just in Sri Lanka but also across the globe, what better fund-raiser than a photographic exhibition to showcase their work, they have decided.
This is also not the first cause they have funded – it had been during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 that they dug deep into their pockets and those of their friends to raise around Rs. 20 million to construct the Neuro-Physiology Unit at the North Colombo Teaching Hospital, Ragama, and once again in 2023 funded the construction of a two-storey building at around Rs. 35 million to house three grades of the Ilukpitiya Madhya Maha Vidyalaya, about 20 kms from Deniyaya town nestling in hilly terrain.
Focusing on their latest project, a group member told the Sunday Times that according to a concept paper on the need for the centre, LRH doctors diagnose about 500 children annually with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) or ‘autism’.
ASD is a complex, lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder and a research study in Sri Lanka in 2009 had found the prevalence rate of ASD as 1 in every 93 children.
From the North Pole
A child with ASD shows impairment in social interaction, delayed or limited language development, repetitive behavioural patterns and rigid behaviours. Even though major aspects of functioning are affected, early diagnosis and treatment, especially early intervention could bring a significant change in a child’s life to allow him/her to be fully functional. In contrast, if the child is left undiagnosed and untreated, autism could be a lifelong disorder.
This is why high-quality services for autism management including early multi-disciplinary team interventions are a necessity, he said, explaining that the multidisciplinary team of LRH consists of two Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists, medical officers, nursing officers, psychiatric social workers, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists. This is while they also provide care for children with many other emotional and behavioural problems and developmental disorders.
The challenge though with an increasing number of children with autism has been the lack of space and an interventional centre has become essential. Currently, LRH manages more than 2,000 children with autism
The rooftop of LRH’s New Auditorium has already been identified for this centre and the architectur-al schematic design and consultancy services, mechanical, electrical & plumbing (MEP) requirements and cost estimation services have been provided by the Chartered Architects of the Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB) free of charge.
Other structural engineering services including structural design, meanwhile, are to be provided by Engineering, Edifice Consultants (Pvt) Ltd., which has offered to do the structural drawings free of charge.
The Royal College Group of 81 Walkers is striving to make this centre a reality in keeping with the tag-line of this project which says it all – ‘Beyond dreams’ for all those special children and their families.
| Focus on the wilds; Sri Lanka and beyond | |
| ‘On the wild side of life’ – One with Nature, a collection of photographs by the ‘Royal College Group of 81 Walkers’ will be inaugurated next Friday (November 22) at the Harold Peiris Art Gallery, Colombo 7, at 6 p.m. It will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on November 23 and 24 (next Saturday and Sunday). Spectacular photography, 150 in all, includes those from the Yala and Wilpattu National Parks, Mannar and the Sinharaja Rainforest in Sri Lanka as well as Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, the harsh and remote North Pole and isolated Galápagos Islands and the volcanic archipelago of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean, which inspired Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The works of Amanda Weerasinghe; Dr. Anurad Cooray; Arosha Ratnayake; Bandula Gunawardene; Dr. Darshana Wijegunasinghe; Dilhan Abhayaratne; Duminda Weerasekara; Janath Vidanage; Kapila Dayaratne; Mahinda Ambahera; Manishe Samarawickrama; Muditha Seneviratne; Sajith De Silva; and Sopaka Karunasundara will be on display. |
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