Kiwanis Club of Muar was founded in 2005 while Kiwanis Special Children Day Care Centre was established in Muar since 2010 to provide immediate help and support to the parents of special children.Catered for children with down syndrome,hyper-active,autism,dyslexia,slow learning and depression,especially those from single parent families.We provide a continuous learning environment for children and adults with special needs who got rejected by normal schools and society.In our centre,we do not define the word “children” by age and we accept anyone with needs regardless of their age.We do accept age 9 to 50 yeras old in our centre.
As a non profit organisation,the centre was run entirely based on donation from the public .A nominal feeof RM200 per month for full day and RM100 per month for half day cladd was collected.The nominal fee is waived for families having financial problems.
The centre mainly providers training to special children to be independent by teaching them living and social skills.Traning such asgrooming,cleaning washing dishes,laundry,speaking,planting vegetables,cooking,singing,dancing and hand crafting are specially designated for the children.
Our centre provides support for these parents through the challenges of raising children with special needs.We set up a parents support group to provide counseling to the parents of special children.By sending their children with special needs to our da care centre ,they can go back to work with no worries.
Our centre is being invited by schools,companieand organisation for giving talks or sharing and even once invited for an on air interview on Aforadio.We brought children along when invited for talk or programme even fund raising project.We hope by bringing them to the eyes of the public can open up the minds of the public,increase their acceptance towards children with special needs and most important to achieve the impact of “life influences life”
Project Results / Impact on Stakeholder
First, to the famillies with special children,especially the parents,we provide counselling and education to them to have peace with their inner self.We support them emotionally, tell them they are not alone and they deserve to be cared for too.
By sending the children with special needs to our centre, parents are able to o work without worries and this reliefs their financial stress.We believe this helps to reduce unwanted family tragedy due to depression or uncontrolled emotion of the parents.
By engaging with the society,we increase the awareness of children with special needs,reduce stigma and promote social inclusion in public .We hope this could reduce discrimination and bullying them.
We counselled the parents to acknowledge their special child as part of the society and not to isolate them from society.
