ACTION in Autism will host a screening of the award- winning film “The reason I Jump“ this weekend at the Gateway mall.
The film is based on a book by Japanese Naoki Higashida, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 13. Its screening, at Cinema 3 at Gateway Theatres in Umhlanga, is part of a fundraiser event in support of children living with autism.
The aim is to help ensure children receive the proper resources to facilitate their life-long condition.
In an interview with the Post, Lisa Aziz, Action in Autism founding member and a mother of an autistic child, said after her son was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, she was told he was not able to educated by schools.
Aziz said she realised there were probably many other children with autism who were not being admitted by the schooling system because of their condition. She said she knew that she needed to do something to change it.
“I wrote to the minister of education, the MEC for education and some newspapers as well. Suddenly, there were all these people calling me saying things like ’I live in a township, there is no school for my kid, my child is being denied access to school’. So I said ’let’s meet’. Then we all met and formalised the organisation,” said Aziz.
With the help of the government, Aziz said there had been one special needs school that catered for children with autism in each province. A total of 12 schools have been opened so far.
“We still knew that was not enough, so we drew up a proposal which we submitted to the department and we partnered with them for the Autism Indaba. We managed to get them to sign off on the autism action plan for the province, and they set aside R200 000 per special needs school to accommodate learners with autism.”
Aziz said South Africa had come a long way with providing assistance for people on the autism spectrum. However, there was still a long way to go to ensure everyone’s needs were well taken care of.
She said although the departments promised to help with this cause, they have not completely fulfilled their obligation and there was still a gap with many children still being denied their right to a basic education.
This has prompted them to start their own programmes such as the Early Development Centre (ECD) for autistic children in 2009. Due to a lack of funding from most families who require assistance from the organisation, they decided to start a fundraiser that would help as many families with autistic children as possible.
The screening will take place on Sunday at 4.45pm.
To learn more about the Action in Autism organisation, readers can visit the following pages: http://www.actioninautism.org.za/ or [email protected]