Case study: Inclusive Education in Nicaragua

You are here: About us > Disability > Inclusive Education > Case study: Inclusive Education in Nicaragua

Since 2005, Handicap International has been developing a project to promote education for disabled children in four counties of Northern Nicaragua, Central America. The pilot project - run in 30 schools - has so far achieved the following:

• 1,422 disabled children included in 30 schools
• Each school provided with accessibility assessment
• 318 children provided with adapted furniture and/or assistive device
• 430 teachers trained in inclusive education
• 50 disabled children follow individual learning plans
• Increased recognition of parents of non-disabled children and social & public stakeholders of the rights to education for ALL children

 
(c) Handicap International

Brenda's story
A 13 year old girl who finally got a place at school

“I now have friends who play with me…” (Brenda)
“We welcome disabled children now because we know that they have the same right to education as the others…” (María Gutiérrez Flores, Brenda’s Teacher)

Brenda lives in the semi-rural town of El Portillo in the northern part of Nicaragua, Central America. She is 13 years old and has a severe motor and visual impairment. Today she is able to go to her  local school and plays happily with her new friends, but just two years ago it was a very different story.

Brenda is the eldest of four children. Her mother, Martha Rodríguez, is a 31-year-old single mum. During her pregnancy with Brenda she was physically and psychologically abused by her alcoholic husband. She gave birth to Brenda at home, attended by a midwife, but a few hours  after the delivery, the newborn girl had a strong fever. “In the hospital, the doctors did a spinal tap but they never told me what she was suffering from. Brenda grew, but she never went to school because she couldn’t walk and I didn’t have the money to buy her a wheelchair. Because of that, she could never go anywhere.”

Brenda’s mother recalls that in early 2005, educational advisors came to her house to encourage her to enrol her daughter at school. Since that day Brenda has been attending her local school and her mother, Martha, has been participating in different parent groups to share experiences with the others who have disabled children. 

Mrs. Rodríguez is very grateful to all the teachers, education advisors and school children who are supporting her. “Thanks to them,” she says, “my daughter’s life has changed; I couldn’t have done it all on my own because I have to work to take care of my four children.”

María Gutiérrez Flores, Brenda’s teacher, explains to us: “We didn’t have the technical capacities to deal with disabled children because we had never received any training related to the issue of disability.”

At first the teachers didn’t want to take on children with motor and physical impairments or with learning difficulties on the grounds that the material and learning environments were inadequate.

Mrs. Gutiérrez Flores was trained together with the rest of the teaching staff by Ministry of Education Advisors and the Handicap International team on different issues relating to disability as well as on teaching strategies. “Now,” she says, “we receive the disabled children and learning difficulties into the classrooms because we know that they have the same rights to education as the other children.”

 
(c) Handicap International