“Praise we the wise and brave and strong,
Who graced their generation;
Who helped the right, and fought the wrong,
And made our folk a nation” – W.G. Tarrant (MHB 896)
In a country where the knowledge of special needs is average, a few people have taken bold steps to create awareness, reduce the level of ignorance and stigmatisation, while holding the hands of people with special needs and walking and talking them into the light of their full potential.
One such hero is Emmanuel Ntow Nyarko, the founder and director of ENNY Foundation in Ghana. This is his story:
I hail from the mountainous Larteh in the Eastern Region of Ghana. I was born on September 25th, some forty-plus years ago. I am the third of four siblings. My family moved around a lot, so I had my primary education in different towns and regions and finally completed at Tema Methodist Preparatory School. I then sat for the BECE at Oninku Junior Secondary School, in Tema. I then went on to St. Martin’s Senior Secondary School in Adoagyiri, Nsawam. After completion, I furthered at the Atebubu Teacher Training College, after which I taught in schools in Berekuso, Aburi, and Accra before moving on to take further studies at the University of Cape Coast, where I obtained my Diploma and Bachelor of Education.
After teaching in a few schools, I started a new chapter at the Mary Mother of Good Counsel School in Accra. There, I developed a system to support students who needed special attention in class. I volunteered to give them and other students who needed to ‘catch up’ with their peers, support. It was during this time that a good friend’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, and I wanted to support her. I started to read as much as I could on the topic, and when the opportunity presented itself, I took it and went on to study at the Autism Training Center of America. I could only go when school was on vacation. The first level (the foundation course) took place in December, 2013.
The training programme was to guide and give resources on the Son Rise Program. This is a program that teaches you techniques on how to support children on the Autism Spectrum using play. The first level is the start-up; the second and third levels are the techniques and guidelines on moving forward as a support therapist; and the final advanced training course (named “Maximum Impact”) prepares and equips you to fully support children on the Autism Spectrum.
Whenever I came back from training, I taught and volunteered on weekends. Because of the educational structure, there was no room for me to use the Son Rise technique at school, and so I was only to use what I had learned during the weekends.
Before leaving for the 3rd level course in 2014, I resigned. I spent some time there and returned after I had completed the entire module in 2015. My last visit to the US was to understand special needs in mainstream inclusive schools, and so I visited and spent some time at the Morning Star School in Florida and learned about their system of inclusive education. Upon my return, I still had quite a few parents calling because they needed support for their wards with special needs.
I heeded to the calls of some parents of children with special needs and volunteered in schools and some special-needs centres. I went to training and workshops organised for Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapists, and Physiotherapists and worked alongside some of them so I could learn more, in addition to the Son Rise Program.
When the workload became too much to bear, I recruited young, willing, and passionate men and women to help me. We didn’t have an office when we started; we literally sat under trees on the University of Ghana, Legon campus to review our work after each session, and I drove around with my therapy resources in my car.
It took almost 5 years, I think. After some time, I realised that I needed to regularise operations and make it more official. I started the registration process in 2018; I registered ENNY Foundation as an NGO. NGO because I realised that the cost of providing these kinds of services was really high and most parents could not afford it. I registered the company as ENNY-my name. Emmanuel Ntow NYarko. Even before the registration process, the team had grown.
Since 2013-to-date, I have developed and managed home programs using the Son Rise program for individual families with ASD and other conditions. The majority of the families I worked with are in Accra and a few families in Akosombo, Cape Coast and Kumasi. Internationally, I have personally visited and worked with a family in the UK. Nigeria and Liberia are two African countries my team and I have worked in; families have also travelled to Ghana and benefited from our intensive 3-6 month intervention program for their kids. Through this intervention, quite a number of schools across the country have been made to believe that inclusion of the special need child is very possible. Currently, working as a consultant to Al Rayan International School Personalised Department, we have been able to demonstrate that every child has a potential when given equal opportunity.
I have no regrets whatsoever. I am fulfilled and I enjoy hearing children say their first words after months and years of working with them and seeing parents smile when they hear their children’s voices for the first time. I still get calls from parents of children I worked with years ago, and it makes me smile to hear them say, “I was thinking about how my child became this and that and you are the person who came to mind.” That is the joy of what I do. I would do this again and again if I had to. I have absolutely, NO REGRETS! 200% no regrets.
