The Road to Inclusion - two MPs' views on this, and MY CALL TO ACTION moving forward

In 2018, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Member of Parliament Rahayu Mahzam spoke on an INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SYSTEM for children. She gave very good suggestions/proposals, all of which are still relevant today and in the future.

I can sense the sincerity flowing from her, as she is speaking not only as an MP but also spoke from her heart as a mother herself of her special needs son with Down Syndrome.

She also hit the nail on the head that these will benefit not only special needs students but also ALL STUDENTS and SINGAPORE AS A WHOLE.

Among other things, two benefits stood out to me personally:
  1. All students get to learn values of empathy, kindness and compassion. They also make meaningful friendships they otherwise would not have.
  2. Enabling special needs students to have a good education to become working adults who can contribute economically, and this will lessen the need for resources (and thus the cost) needed for support structures that will be needed if they are not contributing economically and achieve financial independence.

This was also report in TODAY Online News article MPs call for integration of special-needs and mainstream students
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/mps-call-integration-special-needs-and-mainstream-students Fast forward to 2020, Mayor Denise Phua Lay Peng spoke of TOWARDS FULL PARTICIPATION OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES ___ THE ROAD TO INCLUSION WILL BE CONTINUOUS ONE, AND WILL LAST BEYOND THE LIFETIME OF THE PEOPLE IN MY GENERATION. It is one we must continue to soldier on and endeavour to make progress year by year. We have come a long way but we still have a lot of gaps and are way behind where we should be and where devleoped countries are. I hope to see this change as we seek to live out, implement and materialise the Autism Enabling MasterPlan (ongoing since earlier this year) and the National 4th Enabling MasterPlan (rolling out in 2022). We also need avenues for ground-up initiatives by disabled people (e.g. autistic people) for disabled people - in the spirit of nothing about us without us. One such initiative is the NeuroDivergent Community Alliance (NDCA) , by Mr Eric Chen, the first ever autistic advocate in Singapore.

I call on all Singaporeans to play your part in building Singapore to be an inclusive nation, which is imperative if we want to achieve prosperity and progress for our nation. Because disability inclusion is a hallmark of first world developed nations and international bodies like the World Economic Forum, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations.

One of the first steps is support this is by seeking to understand the experiences, feelings, uniqueness, richness, challenges, and diffculties of vulnerable communities. Listen to the voices of the vulnerable segments such Persons with Disabilities.

One of the ways to do is to support this book project - Beneath the Rug which uncovers real life stories of people in the social impact sector.

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