Dawn Centre
A place of happiness and great joy!
Purposefully designed to accommodate 45 children with either a physical or learning disability. The way the children help each other by sharing skills and strengths is truly inspiring to see.
Getting stuck in the mud is a common problem during rainy season…..easily solved when you have friends like these!
Children born with any disability in Malawi face both a challenging childhood and future as communities can shun the family leaving them isolated and excluded. Our aim is to educate and demonstrate that the children can be supported to attend school and college or to learn a valuable skill to help them be able to become self-sufficient as adults.
We always want to strengthen family bonds so we ask the parents or guardians of the resident children to come and work together at the centre for 1 week each month. This has many benefits….they receive a wage to help support their families as well as being close to their children and learning ways to help with physiotherapy and managing any health issues.
We have 3 classrooms at the Dawn Centre which are staffed by qualified special needs teachers all helping the children to aim high and achieve their future goals. Where possible, the children attend our mainstream Primary School at Namisu which is very proud to be a school which promotes inclusive learning.
Some of the children living here find academic education challenging but have skills elsewhere. We promote skills training at the Dawn Centre and have a full-time carpenter as well as tailors who are available to train children who are more suited to practical skills training. We also encourage disabled children from the surrounding communities to attend these courses. We want to empower everyone we can!
Many of the children who live at the Dawn Centre benefit from regular physiotherapy to alleviate pain and also increase movement and a better quality of life. We have a dedicated in-house team who assist with physiotherapy sessions on a daily basis. Trained physiotherapists attend for 1 day per week to visit the children and also give instruction to our own care team. We encourage parents and guardians from the local areas to also attend these physio sessions. We also run outreach programs where we travel far into the bush to work in very difficult to reach areas….sadly these children would otherwise be unable to access any specialised care.
