by Chris Agbo
SafeHOST International Initiative/Academy with the motto: ‘To every child according to their needs’ and with a slogan: Learning is Fun, is an inclusive educational centre with boarding facilities for children with special needs. It is located at No. 1, Major Gen. Nuhu Bamali Street. Phase 2, Post Army Housing Estate. Kurudu Abuja.
It all started when Mrs. Ngozi Belolisa, the proprietor of the school was working as a Guidance Counsellor in a school at Wuye, Abuja. In 2008. The Senior Pastor, Pastor Sarah Omakwu of Family Worship Centre created a special needs department within the school and Mrs. Belolisa was engaged alongside a special education teacher working in the school to run the department.
Thereafter they were sent to South Africa for further training. In South Africa, they were trained on Educational Therapy. It broadened Mrs. Ngozi’s knowledge on how to manage children with disabilities. Later she was sent to United States of America in 2016 for further training. While there, she learnt so much about Respite care.
Again, she had a niece in United Kingdom who has a child with special needs. One day, her niece engaged her on phone asking some vital questions about the child after that her niece came to Nigeria, left the child in her care. She registered the child at the school (RFA) but living with a child with disability gave her the opportunity to have deeper knowledge of respite care.
The desire to run a school where every child irrespective of the condition will find a conducive learning environment, a school where no child will be rejected on the grounds of disability was born.
Safehost, (a name given by her husband who died few Months after commissioning the school) has therapists and the teachers who are being trained on daily and weekly basis for a better understanding of children with disabilities and how to manage them. In her words, we don’t want to compromise our standards, we are here to help and we want to ensure that parents/guardians who enroll their children get value and positive changes in the learning and living standards of the children.
She understands that there are parents who will want to enroll their children with autism, cerebral palsy etc but they are living far away from Kurudu, so she made provision of boarding facilities, two well furnished rooms, one for boys and the other for girls.
The school also has some blocks of classrooms where the children learn. This school is an inclusive environment where all the children are taught in the class with teachers who understand what inclusive education is all about. They are giving all the children the best. Those with peculiar or sever cases who cannot stay in the classroom all day are taught in the room under the supervision of a therapist. They have children that their parents brought from as far as Bauchi, Gwarinpa, Suleja, Lubge, Kurudu and different parts of Abuja.
Mrs. Belolisa who has been a teacher for over twenty-seven years and her husband who retired as a civil servant, set up the school through all their savings but unfortunately, her husband died in May 2019. The school was commissioned on the first day of September, 2018. Their aim is to create a forum for continuous ‘Grassroot Advocacy’, where children with special needs and their neurotypical counterparts grow up together, learning together and appreciating one another.
The SafeHost community believes that neurotypical children who mingled with special needs children, would grow up to be adults who would not despise or discriminate against people with disabilities.
Their challenge is funding, it is too expensive to manage this kind of school. Many of the parents with special needs kids cannot afford it. But because of her resolve to help these children, which was what prompted her to set up the school in the first place, she has been helping each parent based on their capacity.
SafeHost community needs help financially to sustain the school because majority of those who need her services are middle and low income members of the society. Their children need early intervention and should not be abandoned.
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