Worldwide, it is estimated that 1 in every 7 people face some form of physical or intellectual disability (World Report on Disability,” World Health Organization, 2011). When compounded with conditions of poverty, a physical or intellectual disability can lead to further vulnerability, including challenges to securing a livelihood, and correspondingly to obtaining appropriate food, shelter and healthcare services. Dorna Centre runs a home that cares for children and youth with Autism while Brass for Africa uses music to accelerate learning and development of children and youth with disabilities. The project Advocacy through Music ensures that the Dorna Centre try new, innovative ways of empowering young people with mild to severe autism and other disabilities, as well as helping to shed the stigma and the isolation PWDs face in their communities. According to the study, “World Report on Disability,” PWDs and their families are more likely to face financial and social disadvantage compared to persons without a disability. Using music as a tool to enable change, Brass for Africa delivers weekly music and life skills education, and advocacy training and capacity building to 150 beneficiaries. The selected beneficiaries participate in “Exchange Days,” an all-day event where participants from different programmes come together to learn, play and perform as a collective unit.

Music provides nonverbal happiness for autistic children 

What is autism? Imagine you can’t communicate. Imagine you want something. Imagine you can’t talk. And there are ants biting you. How do you feel? This provides a simple explanation of what autism is. Autism affects speech and social skills. 

Autism should not be a sentence to a life of exclusion and unproductivity. However, children and young people living with autism, and from difficult backgrounds remain vulnerable as they still face a myriad of challenges especially around education and therapeutic services to promote greater independence at home and community settings. They live in isolation and remain invisible to society, often kept indoors and out of site, making it even more difficult to tabulate statistics about them. A survey in Uganda on autism showed that 61.6% had never heard of autism while 3.7% of those who have heard, did not know what autism means. 

Dorna Centre Home for Autism and Brass for Africa (BfA) set up the Amplifying Voices of Persons with Disability in Uganda project with the aim of amplifying the voices of People with Disability (PWD) to ensure provision of the highest quality services and skills training to enable these young people transform and build skills to proactively contribute to and influence their society. This was done by utilizing best practices for addressing advocacy topics through Dorna Center’s awareness and care and BfA’s music and life skills education programme. The project conducted training workshops and outlets that strengthened the skills and confidence of 150 PWD and allies to promote equal access and rights for PWD in Uganda 

Through this intervention, young autistic persons are able to contribute ably in society. They have exhibited improved behaviors and social skills, developing a sense of independence with skills like personal hygiene, taking care of and feeding the project chicken and rabbits and gardening without supervision 

There has also been reported improved perception towards autism by the community, observed during invitations to the converts and other events. Additionally, parents of autistic children can now allow them to join the local band and collaborate with other young players living with autism 

The project worked with Umoja Global to train the Centre teachers into understanding autism and autistic children. One of the key issues was how to understand the communication skills and how they react to and respond to different stimulus and project their feelings. Subsequently, the project has successfully used routines to engage the autistic children. Working with autistic children is not easy.  One of the teachers shared his experience. “I really wanted to abandon this. I engaged my supervisors about a program change but I was told that this is the only outreach available. So I had to stay and teach”. The team moved from one on one to group engagement, with close support and supervision by the teachers. The students had varied emotions and responses each day towards the exercise. Many of the children showed progress in their group and music skills 

Some parents also shared their experiences of finding out and raising autistic children, “At the age 2, my son could not talk. So I took him to the hospital to establish if he was tongue tied but this wasn’t the case. I then took him to a pediatrician who recommended several tests but all was ok. We even tried speech therapy. From childhood, the maid would just leave him alone to watch the TV, so we thought maybe this is what caused it. So when I took him to school, every time they gave him a pencil and paper, he would shred them. I asked the teacher to give him special attention as he had taken long to develop speech. At school the teachers called him the mad boy and soon other students picked this up.  When I took him to the school, the director informed me he had autism. This was the first time I heard the word autism.” This shows delayed diagnosis of autism, which push parents to all options including healers and witch doctors.