The executive director of the New Horizon Special School in Accra, Salome François, has said that support for the institution has experienced a huge drop following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus last year.
The special needs institution is yet to resume full operations since last year’s lockdown in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The difficulty in reopening has been compounded not only by the effects of the pandemic, but also the drop in funding.
Speaking on Sunday Night with Nana Yaa Mensah, Mrs François revealed that the special needs institution has never received any funding from either the current or previous governments.
Sent home
“Government has never given us anything. The Special Education Division wants us to give New Horizon to them to run because I am getting old,” Mrs François said. She will be 92 in May.
“And so I say: ‘Can you run Dzorwulu better than it is now?’ Because I had to raise funds to build Dzorwulu … We did fundraising to build Dzorwulu.”
She said some of the students were sent home before the lockdown because of funding challenges and the risks posed by COVID.
“We had sponsored programmes: people sponsor from abroad. But since the pandemic everybody wrote to me and said, ‘We can’t do it any more because we are old and we want to help our grandchildren.’
“So we sent a lot of them home and we had the lockdown and we have been home since,” François said.
She said the only time the school received support from anybody directly involved in the government was when the former Central Regional minister Ama Benyiwaa-Doe donated GHC1,000 to the school out of her own pocket while on a visit with a group of foreigners.
About the New Horizon School
The New Horizon Special School was founded by Salome François in 1972 and is legally registered as a voluntary, non-profit-making and charitable institution with the Ministry of Education. It is managed by an executive director and controlled by a board of trustees.
The school provides daycare and education for children between the ages of six and 18, as well as vocational training and employment for adults (18 and over), who have intellectual disability.
The school seeks to provide a well-rounded education in a safe and caring environment for children and adults with special needs, as well as to develop each child’s potential to the full so that he or she can lead a productive and satisfying life.
People with other conditions such as spasticity, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, problems with hearing and so on may also be admitted, as long as their primary disability is a learning difficulty.
At present, the student strength stands at 101, ranging in age between six and 63.
Fred Dzakpata
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