Program Highlights: Special Education
We believe children with disabilities have the same right to quality education—and the same potential to lead, thrive, and transform their communities.
We collaborate with communities to co-design bold, scalable solutions that respond directly to local challenges and build lasting systems change. Our special education approach equips schools and educators to deliver individualized, student-centered learning, ensuring children with disabilities can thrive.
Whether scaling our full model or offering modular support like teacher training and inclusive classroom strategies, we’re ready to help more communities unlock the potential of every child.
Spotlight:
Read for Rose Special Education Program.
Kafue, Zambia.
Febby Choombe, Director of Special Education, is the visionary behind Read for Rose. She is an alumni of our flagship Learning & Leadership Center and serves as the lead teacher for children participating in the Read for Rose.
We’re opening doors for children with disabilities to access quality education and life skills.
In March 2019, our flagship Learning & Leadership Center in Kafue, Zambia (named Amos Youth Centre) opened the Read for Rose Special Education Program.
Today, children with a diverse range of disabilities (including visual impairments, hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, spina bifada / hydrocephalus, autism and epilepsy) have individualized learning plans that include acquiring life-changing language, academic, and occupational skills.
Inclusion is a top priority. We also regularly create the space for the children at Read for Rose to learn side-by-side with the students who access daily and weekly programming at our Learning & Leadership Center.
Through family and community outreach, we are challenging deeply rooted stigmas. We are shifting paradigms so that individuals with disabilities can achieve independence, economic empowerment, quality livelihoods, and social acceptance.
Disability is not inability.
We seek to transform the education landscape in Zambia for children and youth living with disabilities.
In Zambia, disabilities affect 4.4% of children and a staggering 1.3 million people nationwide.¹
Across Africa, fewer than 10% of children with disabilities attend school, and in low-income countries, 90% are still left without access to education.²
When families raising children with disabilities lack support, the ripple effects are devastating: stigma grows, opportunities disappear, and entire communities lose out on the gifts these children could offer.³
Read for Rose is a thriving collaboration between community leaders, students, and their families.
Our unique approach.
Inclusive education has been widely recognized as the best way for children with disabilities to learn, empowering them side-by-side with their peers — and thus confronting the deeply rooted stigmas surrounding disability from an early age.
Beyond classroom work, Read for Rose features inclusive and holistic activities:
Access to digital learning through specialized apps on a tablet computer.
Tending a community garden;
Learning about entrepreneurship and obtaining practical skills like knitting doormats, which are sold locally to support the students’ families;
Joining the other children who participate in programming at the Center for the annual Life Skills & Leadership Camp, designed to build confidence and to develop team-building and leadership skills;
Participating in the International Day for People with Disabilities to advocate for change at the national level in Zambia (read our blog post);
“Here at Read for Rose, we are committed to teaching children so that they can live independent lives and become changemakers for their communities. We do not focus on the disability, but on their abilities.”
— Febby Choombe, Director of Special Education, Read for Rose
We’re empowering children with disabilities and special needs through the Read for Rose Special Education Program
Life-changing impact.
Each child in the Read for Rose Special Education Program has individualized learning plans, tailored to their unique abilities and academic potential.
Several Read for Rose students have learned sign language and braille for the first time, opening the door to attend a local, publicly funded school for children with vision and hearing impairments.
Read for Rose students living with speech and hearing impairments acquired the skills necessary to join their peers at a local secondary school.
Family members of Read for Rose students have learned sign language, mending communication barriers and enabling them to communicate fully with their children and siblings for the first time.
Give the gift of empowerment
When we invest in children with disabilities and special needs, we empower them to lead fulfilled lives and to achieve social acceptance through broader societal change.
Data sources
1 “Disability Among Children in Zambia”, Policy Monitoring and Research Centre, 2020
2 UNESCO 2020 Global Education Monitoring Project
3 “Disability Among Children in Zambia”, Policy Monitoring and Research Centre, 2020
