The Reason We Are Here

I am going to start today’s post by sharing a Facebook post by autism self-advocate Carly Fleischmann.

Click here to see Carly’s post before reading.

Tonight, we had a team meeting to fine-tune our mission statement and explanation of the services we are offering in the Jenin community. After spending an hour going over the phrasing of our goals and mission, I still think that Carly says it best. We are here so that families and children who are so often silenced in their community can find their voices and be heard without judgment.

With this goal in mind, we know that we must choose every word we say carefully as our word is being accepted as the sole authority on autism in this community. Today, we were featured on two radio stations, Zain FM and NAS FM where we were asked to define autism and to explain its signs and symptoms to all who were listening. The questions we were asked on air ranged from “Is autism a disability?” to “What is ABA?” to “What advice do you have for the Jenin community to raise awareness about autism?” We answered the questions through a translator, carefully thinking out our answers before we explained them.

Still, we are always working to improve as a team and as professionals and decided to spend the night practicing and refining our mission statement and explanation of our program components. For those of you who are less familiar with what we do, here are our final results (subject to future revisions):

Mission: To empower mothers in underserved communities to help their children with autism through didactic and hands-on training in ABA techniques, family support groups and community outreach.

Parent Training and Cooperative-This component of the program involves theoretical training on Applied Behavior Analysis techniques followed by hands-on practice with experienced therapists. After developing their skills, mothers in the program will then utilize these skills in a cooperative program through which they will provide therapy to each others’ children and train other mothers in the community in these techniques.

Parent Support-ABA is an evidence based practice that helps children with autism improve socially significant behaviors. However, these improvements do not happen overnight. Often behavior gets worse before it gets better. Our parent support group provides a forum for mothers in the program to share their successes and challenges with their children with others who can relate to their experiences.

Sibling Support-Every family member is affected by autism and siblings are no exception. Our sibling support program teaches siblings of children with autism techniques that will help them interact with their siblings and provides a community of other children who can relate to their experiences.

Community Outreach-Our community outreach program works to reduce stigma surrounding autism in the community through educational sessions and lectures in schools, universities and at the Governorate.

We hope that we thought out and used each of these words carefully, but please let us know if you have any suggestions!

(Our team and J3C director Yousef Awad at Radio Zain this morning)

(Enjoying the commercial break during our hour-long Radio Zain interview)

-Melissa