Star Mountain Rehabilitation Center (SMRC) is an institution of the Worldwide Moravian Church working in Palestine. It contributes in securing a life of dignity for persons with intellectual disabilities (PwIDs), through the provision of rehabilitation and training, integration and inclusion, awareness building and community mobilization, on the basis of love, dignity, justice and equality. SMRC trains and rehabilitates around 90 PwIDs whose ages range from 3 months to 40 years old. Thirty qualified staff members work with great commitment and pride in this special mission. The speech therapist on staff works with the children to improve their speech and language skills so that they may communicate more effectively and have the opportunity to participate in and contribute to their society and community. The Board of World Mission sponsors the salary of the speech therapist on their staff.
Aseel is a person with moderate intellectual disability. She is eight years old and lives with her parents and three brothers. In 2018, Aseel joined the Inclusive Kindergarten Program. Subsequently, she joined SMRC School Program to develop her daily life, cognitive, academic and physical skills. During the beginning of Aseel’s enrollment in the School Education Program, her expressive and receptive capacity was extremely weak. She was not able to identify basic colors and shapes as well as the names of animals, fruits and vegetables. Accordingly, a plan was developed by the speech therapist to develop Aseel’s speech and language skills through providing her with two speech therapy sessions on a weekly basis.
Thanks to several speech therapy sessions, Aseel, the girl with a beautiful smile, became more friendly, cooperative, interactive and focused. She is now able to identify familiar and unfamiliar colors, shapes, sizes, names of vegetables and fruits and body parts as well as make a good sentence of three words. Moreover, Aseel can now master her place of articulation through pronouncing sounds like S, F, K, Th, T, R. There is a plan in place to develop her articulation of the following sounds more clearly: Kh, Gh, Q. This will improve and develop her receptive language.
Based on coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Education, Aseel will be partly included in a regular school in October 2021. She will attend regular school twice a week. The remaining days of the week, Aseel will be attending the School Program at SMRC. Her attendance of regular school is a clear sign of her improved ability to participate in her wider community and society.
