• Home

‘Special needs people society’s integral part’

DUBAI — The Arab Family Organisation (AFO) will be holding a symposium here aimed at exploring ways and creating opportunities for the special needs people to help them mingle with other members of the society and integrate with family and community life.

The symposium will be held on May 25 under the patronage of His Highness Dr Shaikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah.

Jamal Al Bah, Chairman of the AFO and the Marriage Fund, said that the symposium will be held at the Sharjah Cultural Palace and will coincide with the celebration of the first-ever mass wedding of 40 special needs couples from UAE and other countries that will be held on the same day under the patronage of General Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and the UAE Minister of Defence. The mass wedding will be attended by more than 400 ministers and high ranking officials from various Arab and foreign countries.

“The main objective of organising the mass wedding and the symposium for the special needs people is to alleviate their feeling of isolation from the world and to assure them that we are sparing no efforts in supporting them with more care and attention. We are following the precious words of the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who used to continuously stress the need to support the special needs people by all means, and I still remember his word “Curbing disability is a national responsibility on the members of the society,” Al Bah said.

He announced that next month a mass wedding for the special needs Palestinians will be organised in Jerusalem and will be titled “Jerusalem Wedding”.

Al Bah said that the word integration means consolidating the mutual ties between the special needs people and their normal counterparts and that proper care and attention should be given to the special needs children by their parents while accepting their disability and endeavouring to make them feel that they are an integral part of the society that can never be neglected.

“The main problem faced by the majorily of special needs people is their relations with their family and society members as they find it very hard to live a normal life as others without encountering difficulties in moving around be it at their homes or at work place. Unfortunalty various societies are completely ignoring the basic rights of special needs people to live a normal life without any feeling of isolation or deprivation.”