"Son needed a special school, so they set up one for youths like him
She gave up her a corporate career and learnt how to be a special needs educator. Now she and her husband provide a safe place for some 200 Muslim youths - but it's been a rocky journey.
SINGAPORE: “You want to say something to them, Ashraf?” Madam Faraliza Zainal asked her son. He let out an odd, silent laugh that shook his lanky frame, and then the 17-year-old began writing on a small whiteboard, carefully shielding the words from our view.
Then he stopped. Wiped off the words. Began again. Stopped again. Wipe. And so on.
“He’s still very shy,” admitted his mother, the only person Ashraf seemed willing to talk to – and the woman who has gone to extraordinary lengths to help her reticient, socially impaired son fit in in this world.
Some seven years ago, Mdm Fara quit her corporate career with a global company, threw herself into learning how to teach children with special needs, and – with little experience other than what she had with Ashraf – opened a school tailored to those with “learning differences”, as she put it.
What started out as a class of one – Ashraf – in the storeroom of a mosque, has today grown into a school for some 200 Muslim youths with a variety of conditions from cerebral palsy to Down Syndrome."
An amazing story of love, sacrifices n growth of a mother, a woman n x-corporate warrior!!
I recently got to know of 2 mother's in PRC who did something similar in Shanghai starting a NGO dedicated to their kids n other like their kids - kids with special learning needs.
What they hv embarked on n delivered r simply incredible. Something that I could never hv been able to do.
Kudos n admiration to them. Here n in PRC n all over the world who engage in such great deeds!!
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