Special Education Collaborative Outreach (SECO) is a non-profit organization founded in the USA on the desire to facilitate positive change in the everyday lives of individuals in at-risk populations.
SECO’s focus is to promote inclusion with a focus on underprivileged and differently-abled individuals. The goal is to empower them to live successful lives through their own merit.
According to the President/Founder, SECO, Imuetinyan Okwueze our members strive to work hand-in-hand with these individuals to develop their personal skills and improve their ability to make their way in the world. “We seek to make a connection with persons in different circumstances and develop true empathy, rather than detached sympathy, that we may duplicate the best of ourselves in others while drawing forth the best already within them. Our membership is comprised of educators, professionals, parents, and other individuals of diverse backgrounds, all of whom are passionate about creating a brighter future through inclusion and empowerment”.
Imuetinyan said further that even before the official foundation of SECO in 2018, many of us were working silently in the background for years. “We have seen enough with our own eyes, experienced enough through our own professional and personal encounters, to realize the need for greater awareness for spreading the word on “Inclusion”.
She said that our foundation aims to create greater awareness and understanding in mainstream society regarding the prevalence and needs of a large, and largely ignored, subsets of our population.
However, Imuetinyan said that due to cultural or financial circumstances, many fall through the cracks and are left to struggle through life, so SECO aims to demonstrate that these people do have the capacity for success, provided they are given the opportunity, proper training, attention, and encouragement to identify and develop their individual strengths and talents. “We hope to prove to them that they are not less than, or dis-abled, merely differently-abled”.
Continuing, Imuetinyan said, “we are now working to develop and sensitize our communities in Nigeria on the importance of Inclusion. We must involve working hands-on with individuals and collaborating heavily with families, caregivers, and communities. We seek and welcome partnerships with other organizations and agencies that share our vision and wish to participate in creating a platform that will foster the Inclusion and development of persons with different abilities wherever there is a need”.
Recalling some of the empowerment programmes SECO has done before now, Imuetinyan Okwueze said that SECO had organised fashion show for differently abled individuals to booster their self esteem, workshops and training on information on disabilities for teachers and parents, providing resources to special centers for downs syndrome. Celebral palsy, autism, providing three special assistance transit buses that are wheelchair compliant for use by people with special needs, providing adult diapers, commodes, walkers, wheelchairs, clutches for senior citizens and all who need them, providing resources like books, clothing, toys and enrichment programs to train and teach special skills.
Stressing on the challenges of SECO helping persons with disabilities to actualise their potential, she said, “SECO is spending a lot of money on shipping and clearing cost to bring in containers of items. The government should consider giving SECO rebates and waivers. SECO wants to partner with local, state and Federal government on how to set up, promote and trains special teachers, provide infrastructures and make policy changes”.
On a media tour at the training facility cite of SECO foundation in Lekki, Lagos construction is near finishing worth millions of Dollars. Container load of training kits running in millions of dollars are getting cleared at the Port at high cost of duties. Guest houses for expertise who will carry out the training are ready.
In addition, SECO Ambassador, Emeke Nti, who conducted the facility tour said, “the whole idea behind the foundation is to help individual disabilities, helping the less privileged with the hope that government policies in Nigeria will help empower them have equal rights in our society. “SECO focuses on working across all spectrum of our daily life – education, construction, finance and others just to ensure that these less privileged among us have a voice in the society, having been marginalised for such a long time.
Explaining the extend the foundation has achieved this goal, Nti said, “First we are creating awareness; again when we think about inclusion and diversity, non of that could happen without access and to achieve access is to make sure that you create awareness about what is going on in the society.
Nti further said that as we know in some African countries, it is one thing to pass policy and another thing to implement it. “So the goal we are working on for now is to create awareness, to make sure that persons with disabilities are given favourable policy by FG, cooperation while we provide support around that policy. So that for instance, when you are constructing a new building, you are thinking about making accommodations for persons with disabilities with adaptability to ensure you support them as well. When we think of educational system, we think about developing a curriculum with accommodations and adaptability to support individuals with intellectual disabilities”.
According to Nti, SECO focuses on those levels of accommodations. “Our goal right now is awareness, and we have been doing campaign in many localities, cities where we have visited to work with those local govts and agencies providing supports to the citizens. In doing that, we have actually been pulling from our personal resources with our very few Exco members. We have provided wheelchairs, walkers, adult diapers, resources, books, clothing, stationery, toys, shoes and many other items for people in need and displaced individuals.
We have during this pandemic, providing food items, cash palliative, face mask and hand sanitizers to local communities in various states in Nigeria, for example cadets that just recently pass out from the Police College Kano. We did T-shirt and hat for them as part of our sensitization process like I told you earlier. During the Covid-19, we brought in palliatives and shared among some states in Nigeria”.
Looking at the huge project SECO is carrying out in Nigeria, it was asked if the foundation is ready for collaboration, Emeke Nti responded, “in everything we do, we are ready for partnership or collaboration. But let me make it clear here that the first step we need is support from the Federal Government, that is the missing link. When you have NGO like us who are really doing fund raising from our personal pockets, putting our own money into it to support people with disabilities, what we need is a support from the FG, because what we are doing in most societies is what the FG should be responsible for those projects.
So if we come in to support the FG, the least they can provide is access, and provide policies to support us, so that training these kind of people to ensure that they go into the workforce and get jobs. Also FG should provide waivers, and discounts on custom duties and taxes incentives to enable us ship down our equipment needed to train these disabled people”.
On moves to intimate government about this laudable project, he said , “we have some individual who are working within the government sector right now, talking to government about this project initiative. They are aware of it. However, we need to do more at every government level.
