How far have we come? Looking towards the next 50

Okay, assalamu alaikum, good afternoon and a very, very warm welcome to the University of Birmingham campus, Dubai campus-led discussion today, entitled ‘How far have we come and towards the next 50.’

We're so delighted that so many of you joined us today and I know some of you are still joining as we welcome our guests from across Abu Dhabi to share their thoughts on accessibility and inclusion and towards making a key contribution today.

My name is Sanam Yakub and I'm the equality, diversity and inclusion lead for the Dubai campus here. Before I hand over for the formal introduction, I'd like to give a very brief outline of the format this afternoon. We'll begin with a a formal introduction by our Provost, Professor David Sadler, after which we will begin our discussion. Now, there will be an opportunity for you as an audience to ask our panel questions, so, feel free to use the chat function in Zoom today and it's great to see that you have already engaged and are connecting with each other, this is what today is all about, about connection. So, without further ado, let us commence today's session and it is my absolute pleasure to be able to introduce you to Professor David Sadler, Provost, University of Birmingham Dubai, David.

Thank you very much Sanam, thank you very much everybody for joining us this afternoon here in Dubai. It's my pleasure in turn to introduce our speakers and our facilitator and to say thank you for joining this inaugural event for UoB Dubai as part of the University of Birmingham’s disability history month. The audience, yourselves, is a mix of school educators, non-governmental organisations and foundations, students and parents and staff from the University of Birmingham, both in Dubai and in the UK so, and indeed from Lebanon too, I know from looking at the chat box and probably elsewhere in the world for all we know. So, the focus will be partly on Dubai and Abu Dhabi, we hope to get a range of perspectives in the discussion that follows and we hope it's the first of a number of events which will focus upon changing the need to improve the lives of people of determination. I have three speakers to introduce and our facilitator, in no order of importance whatsoever I hasten to add, so please don't take any order of importance from the order of presentation, I'd like to welcome, introduce to the audience Ruby Mahmoud, who is Division Director for the Office of Students of Determination of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Education and Knowledge. Ruby started a career as a teacher in both mainstream and special education and written school improvement projects, an educational consultant she's worked in private and public education for over 20 years. Her recent work at ADEK has involved being part of the team which opened our calendar school, the first autism school in Abu Dhabi, and she's currently taking doctoral study on inclusion in the UK. Second, to introduce to the audience today is Marilena de Costa who has a background in law and is specialised in disability advocacy. She was recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation as a social innovator in the Arab world and endorsed by the United Nations for her advocacy programmes. Marilena is also the founder of the Butterfly Foundation, which is an advocacy agency supported by man the Authority of Social Contribution in Abu Dhabi, to enhance the lives of people of determination. The Butterfly Foundation informs, supports, enables and empowers people of determination in making informed choices, accessing services and cultivating effectively how the decision-making process affects their lives. It fosters relations between community organisations and the public and private sectors. The third panellist is Khala Bali who is a believer in the part of collaboration and community to tackle challenges. Currently working in initiatives development with the Special Olympics UAE, Khala previously established and managed Goals UAE, the first community-based program providing adaptive recreational and leisure opportunities for individuals on the autism spectrum in the whole of the GCC. The Special Olympics UAE was announced by… in October 2017 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum as an independent organisation dedicated to changing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. The organisation means to empower people with intellectual disabilities through sports and providing them with the leadership opportunities to help display their talents, integrate them with mainstream society. I think you’ll agree, we have three extraordinarily talented and enlightened and informed speakers that I'm sure will produce an interesting and probably quite challenging debate in the moments ahead of us. And Sarah Benson, who's the facilitator, is the person who has the challenge of bringing order to this process. Sarah is the Campus Director at the University of Birmingham Dubai of the program Inclusion and Special Educational Needs. She studied at the University of Virginia for her PhD, where the focus was on comparative special educational practices. She's published on Jordanian inclusion policy and practice and has ongoing research project and process with the inclusion practices of Jordanian teachers, the policies of the wider Middle East and north Africa region. Sarah is passionate about high quality teacher education, has worked with teachers throughout her career. I hope she won’t mind me mentioning but in 2013 Sarah was previously a Fulbright Scholar and in that role spent a year in a slightly cooler environment, traveling to Norway, where he spent a year working with Norwegian teachers and students. So you can say that our facilitator has certainly spanned the globe and the range of climes and climatic conditions. They’re our panellists, Sarah's role is to facilitate and assist the process of dialogue and discussion, and on that note I would like to hand over to Sarah.

Thank you so much, David, for joining us today, it truly is an honour to welcome you to our campus. For those of you who don't know, Professor Sadler is our new Provost here on the Dubai campus and we're so glad to have him here. So thank you for joining us today and thank you for those lovely introductions. The University of Birmingham is first and foremost a civic university which, to us, it means having a conversation with the communities that we exist in. And so we're excited today to have this conversation with the communities that we are operating in with, here in Dubai and I think that I speak for everybody at the University of Birmingham who's had an opportunity to work and speak with these three women on our panel today, that we're honoured that you're gracing us with your presence, so thank you. It is going to be a conversation today and I think what we'd like to do, obviously, the focus is on accessibility and inclusion and we know that the UAE is always looking forward, our vision is always pointed in the direction of the future, but I'd like to take a moment and just kind of ground us in the present and where we are. So, I have an opening question to ask the three of you and that really is just if you could tell me what accessibility and inclusion looks like in the United Arab Emirates today, and I'll go ahead and ask Khala to go ahead and get us started with just a brief overview of where you see us standing today with accessibility and inclusion.

Thank you so much, accessibility in the UAE, I think we can all agree, has changed dramatically in a very, very short amount of time. So, I think that even in the in the last six or seven years, since I established Goals UAE and now working with the Special Olympics, absolutely unrecognisable. I mean from an environment where, you know, you had parents who really, you know, were hesitant to to get services for their children, really a lack of services available across the UAE and absolutely almost no sort of extracurricular or, you know, leisure activities. So, as a parent you were left, you know, pretty much to your own devices. What we've seen, I mean, is just such a rapid transformation in the last five years that I think that it's very, very encouraging. Where we do definitely have work to do, we are on a path to get that done, I think, in a very short amount of time. Every… annually, I mean, the resources that we have and just the, you know, Ruby's office didn't exist a few years ago, so just having an Office for Students of Determination within ADEK is such an incredible, you know, signal for what's to come. Or, you know, Marilena's organisation didn't exist a year ago, so to have someone who can speak to advocacy for parents and the community is really, I think, you know, a tremendous signal of where we're going. Right, thank you so much Khala. So, really looking at the availability of resources and how much that's really expanded. Maybe, Marilena, you could come in and tell us a little bit, maybe about how the laws in the UAE have changed to allow those. You are still on mute Marilena. So, laws are changing dramatically, the United Nations has aligned and the leadership of the UAE has aligned and ratified the United Convention on the Rights of Persons of Disability and also the sustainable development goals. Last year Abu Dhabi and the the Community Development Department was one of the signatory of City for All compact. So, there are plans to make Abu Dhabi fully inclusive and accessible, and only a few weeks ago we have the launch of the new disability strategy from… led by DCD and also by six government access, and simultaneously we are working, DCD and the Human Resource Authority are working on a new employment law. And let's not forget that I'm part of, as a project, I'm an incubator project selected by the Authority of Social Contribution, with other nine projects, to enhance the life of people of determination in Abu Dhabi and so and to implement to enhance the third sector. So there are… this is the beginning of an exciting journey and the Butterfly Foundation, like Khala and all the stakeholders, are happy to join conversation and we wish to thank you very much to take this initiative and I hope this is just the beginning. but certainly a lot is happening. And in terms of accessibility, the most significant thing is that the government is leading it, is leading this agenda. So, it's really beautiful. During Covid was the government to make accessible for people of determination that the Covid test at home, so it's just beautiful, we need just the legislation, as everything else take time, and also this enforcement take time but a lot is happening.

That's a perfect way to kind of bring Ruby into this conversation, thank you so much Marilena for sharing with us all of the beautiful progress that's being made right now, which I think is part of the excitement of living in the UAE. Ruby, maybe you could come in and touch a little bit more on both accessibility and inclusion and what it looks like in schools right now, but a little bit of picking up where Marilena left off on the change in the laws and the existence of your position.

Good afternoon everybody, and it's wonderful to join the panel to speak about this incredible movement that is taking place in the UAE and specifically at this moment in Abu Dhabi. So as my colleagues have mentioned previously, uh there has been a shift and a dramatic shift in movement and the Federal Law of 2006 concerning the rights of people with determination is one of those areas that has driven this shift forward. When we talk about the direction coming from the leadership. Within the… within everywhere in Abu Dhabi, where in the UAE what we are looking at is you can see that visibly as Khala mentioned, you will now see language, you will see signage, you will see people of determination out and about. You will see counters that are designated for people of determination, so, we are… whether, you know, that the Special Olympics were, you know, being hosted, the World Games in 2019 here really did have a real landmark in the shift in people's thinking, and the everyday person. And for the schools, we really did embrace that event and use that to look at how schools could become more inclusive, schools could educate, schools could have more awareness around people of determination and particularly obvious students of determination. And the unified schools projects that came about through the Special Olympics team were one of those areas that schools did embrace and students, whether they were POD students or non-POD students, all became involved and active and teachers really took this initiative and used this to educate, inform and also raise awareness within the school community about what needs to happen, what needs to change. So, lots of changes taking place, as we know, Butterfly Foundation coming on board and lots of other initiatives coming on board through MAN as well. And I think the Abu Dhabi for us, the DCD people of determination strategy that they are leading and having those over the next five years is really going to look at what we have, and shifting from that medical model and looking at and shifting into that social care model. And that's one of the biggest areas that we are beginning to work and see some of those changes.

Great, thank you so much, Ruby, for that really broad perspective and I want to… I just saw a question pop up in the question and answer box, I want to encourage all of our attendees and participants, other panellists are talking and having their conversation, please feel free to continue the conversation in the chat and add any of your own questions in the question and answer box, I promise we will get to a few of those. So, please feel free to put those in the in the question and answer box as we go. I think what Ruby was just touching on and what Marilena touched on is this idea of progress and change and the government is definitely one of the leading voices for making sure that that they are creating an accessible society. Historically and globally we often see that the biggest changes come from advocates and parents and those are often the drivers when we see change for people of determination. So I think what I'd like to do is start with Marilena and, you know, your job as an advocate is to come up with win-win solutions right for everybody, everybody is getting something out of the deal. Could you talk maybe about a personal win-win situation that you have been involved with with people of determination here and making that progress.

Advocacy, Dr Sarah, is not really… it's new in this part of the world, sometimes, also my background in law doesn't help because this is legal, but now more families are joining the Butterfly Foundation. It's and also it's difficult for the Butterfly Foundation to approach service providers as an entity, an external entity because we are not always welcoming. Because they… there is a perception that the Advocacy Foundation is not working for the same aim and for the same objective. But more and more people are understanding now that advocacy is a way to a process of empowerment and to give a voice to people of determination and their families, and to make sure that their voice is heard an act upon. But to answer to your question one win situation often is with schools, we go to schools as and we advocate for inclusive education and accessible education schools. Not all schools are ready for that, and so sometimes we have to find mediated solution, and they are not what the parents want and they are not what the school want, but we have to and we are starting to work on that. But up to December, most of the school wouldn't even meet with the Butterfly Foundation but now there is more openness and more collaboration and I always say that it’s about joint and integrated efforts, we cannot work and we cannot improve in this area with if we don't join forces. I know that there are, Sarah, a lot of parents watching this and are under scrutiny, so I have to be extremely careful. These parents, now they say, Marilena, education and accessible education is a very expensive industry, we know it's like that all around the world, and so, so many families cannot afford. And parents, they say, we need to ask ask Dr Ruby for affordable schools and other options, and that we are not left with the only option to have children home schooling. So I know that Dr Ruby, ADEK and DCD, they are working tireless to… for a new inclusive policy. But really… and it takes time, so I'm trying to encourage parents to be patient and that that we are all there working together. But certainly, home schooling as the first option, many times puts parents under strain physically and also mentally. So, we need to join forces on these.

Thank you, Marilena, and I think we're going to come back to Ruby and talk a little bit about schools in a moment, but I think that last point that you touched upon, that parents can feel often under stress and like they don't have a lot of options and and so become the voice of advocacy and pushing governments to move forward and open schools. I know Khala has experienced that herself and as a parent was facing a lack of options and so really kind of did something about it in a way that I think is so wonderfully unique, but also we so often see bridges built between people through sports and recreational activities. And so, Khala, could you talk a little bit about the work that you've played and you've done, quite literally played, in making changes and creating options for parents and their children here in Abu Dhabi specifically?

Yes, thank you, I mean, I think you're correct obviously, a lot of change does sometimes start from, you know, parents and family members. About six years ago, I have a son, I am a parent as well, so, I wear the two hats, so the program hath and the parent hat, Ruby gets to meet both of those, you know, depending upon the day and the setting. But when my son was very active he wanted to do things like his sisters and at the time, he was born in 2007, so we're talking you know 2011 or so when he starts to have an opinion about things, and there wasn't a lot. And what concerned me, you know, what started to concern me was OK, if my son is not finding an outlet when he's this age, what's going to happen when he's 18 and 20 and 25, like, how is the community going to be ready? Now what I did see was a whole lot of goodwill and good intention, my son would come home with remote controlled cars, you know the men's college had come to visit or Mobadola had sent a representative to visit and spend time with the kids, but these were things that came from the heart and people wanted to connect with the students, but it was not anything that was having a real impact on my son's life, he didn't like cars, he didn't care and we had seven or eight of them in our home at one point. So, I wanted to really try to find a sustainable model that we could test out and see, you know, what would work, is the community ready for something like that, are we ready to shift our focus from, you know, just this let's do something nice to let's really have an impact. And a lot of my inspiration came from programs that were started in the UK, in the US, often by parents that are now global organisations. Special Olympics itself was started in somebody's backyard, very large backyard, but somebody's backyard, and it came from the direct need for their sister with an intellectual disability to have, you know, that connection and that engagement. So, the program that I built Goals UAE started very small, let's get 10 kids together to you know play football, and really started to snowball because it was something that the community was ready for. Partners were ready, schools got on board right away, universities, in addition to parents. So, that you know the community as a whole came together to facilitate that change. So I think that's what's been such a really wonderful journey for me.

Thank you so much for sharing that both personal and, in many ways, a professional journey for you now and… Yes… Special Olympics hold a special place in my house, it's how I got involved with people of determination, I used to teach therapeutic writing and one of the one of my favourite things, and I encourage… I know we had a question come up about volunteering, and it's a wonderful way to get involved. I think, Khala, you talked about the community being ready for things, and Marilena, you talk about all of your parents that are watching and asking about opportunities for schooling, so I think it's definitely time to bring Ruby in because she is really the architect and somebody who is looking around at this community and saying we're ready and she is the one to pull those levers of change at the schooling system. So can you talk, Ruby, a little bit about the process you've had with the Al Kha Rama school and where ADEK is going next.

I think for the education community and the the changes that need to be made, one of the pillars with the DCD strategy, and ADEK is leading that, is around ensuring that we do have inclusion within schools. And that is a priority for ADEK as an organisation, Her Excellency Sara Musalim is very dedicated and committed to ensuring that students do have access to education. When we talk about affordable education, that is also something that we are looking at very closely, we understand that there are high costs associated as with the expatriate community accessing private education, so, we want to work together with schools, with parents, with students and with organisations to see how collaboratively we can overcome these challenges. We need to educate, we need to educate the school community, the school leaders and the teachers because we, you know, we can put the policies in place, that's very easy for us to do, and we can say, yes, we want all schools to be inclusive and please ensure that all POD are included within schools, however if schools do not have the resources and do not have the staff who are able to include those students in their classrooms, in the lessons and integrate them with other students, that is a failure for all of us. So, what we are doing is looking very closely and working through this strategy that has been launched for Abu Dhabi and we are going to be working with all our partners, all the way through from early childhood, all the way through to higher education and again on to employers as well, so that we are going to have a seamless journey for people of determination, who will start from our early childhood education all the way through. So we want to work collaboratively, we want to work… it's to ensure that all of those challenges that parents are facing and, believe you me, we have plenty of calls on a daily basis and I completely sympathise and so does the rest of ADEK and what we do want to do is create solutions that are embedded, that are long term and that are not short-term quick fixes. It's very easy for us to pick up a phone and say to schools please include this student in there, but what we do want to do is ensure that that student receives those quality services and that staff are able to provide an inclusive environment. So, we are looking to, as I say, develop the workforce alongside a range of different partners and lots of that information will be released as we move forward into 2021. And I think some of the lessons learned for us with the development of Al Kharama school, where I'm sitting at the moment, are really crucial, and what it did highlight for everybody is the lack of services and the fact that parents are no longer worried about stigma, they're no longer you know concerned that their child goes to a school that is for students with autism, and they're not concerned about that, what they do want is quality services and services exist, schools are integrating people with determination, students certainly there, lots of centres exist, however the quality of the services is absolutely critical and we do need to work with the Department of Health, we need to work with the Department of Community Development, to ensure that we have the people licensed, all the stuff that are working there, and those services are integrated and accessible. There's no point in ensuring that you know students, as I said, are in schools, however they've got to leave school and then access therapy services, you know, each day and that's taking two hours out of the school day, or that only the special needs teacher understands how to work with them, that's not going to solve this issue long term. So, lots of work is happening behind the scenes and we are going to have lots of initiatives moving forward in 2021 for schools. Ruby, you really speak my language when when you start talking about we can't, we can't… teachers need to be prepared to have students in the classroom and and really we need to… our general education teachers need to be prepared to be inclusive educators and we cannot continue to rely on specialist services, and I say that as a special education teacher by training but I agree that inclusion is really the name of the game and how we need to be moving forward. If I can, if I can say a few words in reply and answer to Dr Ruby?

Ruby, I'm really happy to hear this from you, because what I wish to share is the daily experiences of the children enrolled and registered and then left in classroom without the due support and with the necessary knowledge and expertise to respond to their needs. Of course there are so many successful cases of inclusion but there is a necessity of accessibility in the school on different layers, accessibility of buildings, accessibility of social accessibility, and also accessibility… sensory accessibility, how many children with autism are in schools and they can access… and they can have the comfort on a sensory room, or they can wear sunglasses or defend their… for ear noises when they are in in the class. If they are not there, expertise to to assist them. So, I'm happy to hear that inclusion is more than just getting the child registered and assigned to a shadow teacher, it requires a bigger effort but probably I love to go back to parents and say that they have to be patient, still a bit patient but work is happening and I can’t give them a timeline, but still things will happen soon. It is lovely to… you know, I think that this is one of the ways that the university is hoping to continue to step in and support our community and looking at teacher training and working with ADEK as well as, you know, teachers and our teaching assistants across the region to help prepare them to be more inclusive educators and, obviously, I teach on that program so I have a vested interest in it but I think that any courses and work done within the region to prepare teachers to be inclusive educators is so, so important. One of the things that we've talked about a little bit is the difference between accessibility and inclusion, and so often we do see things, people being given access but it's not always the most inclusive way. I know that often technology has been a way for us to provide people of determination more access, obviously, we are doing this online, on Zoom, so we should address the elephant in the room, of the pandemic that has moved our entire lives online, which at times has both created more accessibility but possibly created less inclusion, and at other times it has possibly created more inclusion as well as more accessibility.

And so I would just… maybe another whole group question would be can you reflect on how accessibility to services for people of determination has changed during the pandemic and, along with that, if there's any exciting new technologies that you've learned about over the course of this pandemic that you think our audience might benefit from hearing about, I would love you to… I'd love to open up and share that. Maybe Khala can come in first, from the perspective of a parent looking at both accessibility and inclusion through technology, and then we can move to Ruby and Marilena who might have some different perspectives.

Yeah, I think actually, I mean, I'd like to put on my program hat for this question, if you don't mind? Great, yeah. This is an area that I was lucky enough to really get in early and do some, you know, deep diving. Ruby touched upon one of a… really a focal program of Special Olympics right now, which is the Unified Champion School program, the unified concept meaning that we're not providing programs for… that are segregating people of determination but really creating programming that are bringing together students of determination with their mainstream peers, as equals on a team, you know. And what what has been found through the research that's been done, you know, a lot in the UK and Europe is that these programs really do break down barriers, create friendships, really change the entire culture and climate of schools. So, it's at the very heart of all of the programming that we're doing and the work we're doing in schools in the communities, and, of course, when Covid hit, you know, how, I mean, the first thing was how are we going to continue to engage, you know, our athletes and our families. Because these are people that feel, you know, kind of can be on the outskirts of things in the best of times. So, what was going to happen in Covid, and obviously, as Ruby and well everyone here knows, you know, people of determination were among the hardest hit in the Covid, in terms of accessibility to school and being able to engage in technology. So, I was really anxious to see if a unified model could be effective online, and early on we began working with New York University, who is a long time partner of mine, I've worked with them for the last six years, and we developed a unified partner, a virtual unified partner program, and from the get-go we decided to take a lot of data on how this was affecting, and in the beginning most of the parents had very little hope, I was actually amazed that anyone signed their family member up because everyone just thought this isn't going to work. And what we were really looking for was was there going to be meaningful engagement, were the… were the unified partners, were the mainstream university students going to really have a shift or an ability to get to know these athletes and were their athletes going to be able to develop friendships and maintain those friendships. And what we found was that it was incredibly successful when implemented, like, in a one-to-one. And of course there was training ahead of time, there was support for the unified partners and the families, but what we found was those partnerships were among some of the strongest that I had seen working with NYU students over the last six years. So, we have used that you know information and those sort of best practices to roll out a number of programs virtually and what we've found is the key is to really keep that engagement very narrow, so the one-to-one or the small group where there can be that direct internet interaction. But we have found that it's been you know incredibly successful across, you know, a number of programming options. So, it's been… it's actually been… it's given us new tools that we're going to be able to use moving forward even beyond the pandemic.

That's great thank you so much for sharing that work, Khala, it's so lovely to hear all of the success stories. Maybe, Ruby, if you wanted to come in, if you… if there's any, if there's any lessons learned from the school perspective on how we're engaging students? Or Marilena, if you've heard of any technologies that your parents or families are working with? I'll open it up to whoever is prepared to jump in first and then we'll move to the next participant.

Certainly, technology has accelerated accessibility, even in the way that ADEK responds with the e-learning guidelines soon after the pandemic, allowing all the students e-learning through digital technology. It has been great. But technology for… from some students works very well, from other students and especially e-learning work doesn't work, it's not all a unique… we cannot give a unique response. Maybe in terms of e-learning and digital solution for e-learning, we love to make sure that they are fully accessible and… but as a first response the community was very, was very happy with it. And also we have technologies that selected by MAN, the Authority of Social Contribution, last year and they're still on an incubator, on an initial phase, but a lot of technology, assistive technology to… for communication, for visual impairment, for ear impairment and for accessibility, transport accessibility and accessibility to buildings in Abu Dhabi. So, there are a lot of projects on the pipeline, but still on an initial phase.

That's great, thank you. And, Ruby, was there anything that ADEK learned in the in the sudden shift, as a fellow educator and working within schools, I know that the University of Birmingham made a dramatic and very quick pivot to all online learning and I know it was challenging for us all, but we've all learned things. Is there anything that you'd like to share that came out of ADEK's shift to an online accessibility and inclusion.

I think one of the learning… key learning points was the lack of training that is provided for teachers when it comes to technology, and I think that came across not due to the fault of teachers, having been a teacher myself I can say that, you know, we try, we do what we can, however, I think that was a real challenge. And we were very quick to work alongside many partners to ensure that we could overcome that challenge too, so that student students were able to access that online learning, whatever platform was being utilised. I think there was some positives that came out of it. I think certainly for parents being able to access the teacher, that was great, easy, you know, whenever you want, you can speak to them and that's great, not sure how great that is for the teachers, but, certainly, that was something that came out as a positive for some of the parents, that when we looked at some of the surveys. And and I think some sessions and some of the ways and teachers were able to provide lessons across the board and they were able to… specialise teachers were able to obviously work across larger groups of students and provide those sessions, but also for some parents they were able to access those sessions at a later time. I think some of the challenges really were for parents and when we look at some services, such as therapy services and students who require some support around behaviour and certainly for POD students, there was… there was… there were challenges that, you know, schools did step up, we definitely looked at all of our policies when we were developing them to ensure that all of them included students of determination and what schools need to need to do for them. However, I think for some students of determination that face-to-face learning and those services that they require and that social interaction is one of the challenges that, I think, not just for schools in Abu Dhabi but across the board, we need to be looking at. And as well as mental health issues, I think that's something that, whether we speak about the mental health of students staff or parents, this pandemic has certainly highlighted, that everybody, across the world really, needs to think about that support for mental health and areas for students as well as parents and staff as well. So, out of that we've got some great teachers who are now able to access all sorts of platforms and their technological skills have advanced very, very quickly and also it's allowed us to really look at what are the challenges that schools face when it comes to implementing distance learning or online learning and we were able to ensure that every single school had, and every single student had, access to a device, as well as access to the internet to make sure that that learning could take place and I know that was not something that other parts of the world were able to provide and but certainly here in in Abu Dhabi we were able to do that, so that was a great success for us. Yeah, thank you, Ruby, for sharing that. I know it sounds like there's maybe some cross pollination here in which college can share some of the one-on-one pieces that they've learned from and how to keep students engaged in that mental health and well-being up and those personal connections that are so important between our teachers and students and so important between our parents and teachers as well.

There's been a few questions that have come through on the chat and the Q&A and I encourage all of our participants to continue putting those up. I'd like to turn to some of those right now because I think there's a question that's come up about what's being done to educate schools and teachers about having children of determination in their class, in order to make it, the questioner asks, less scary? And I do think that it is a worry that many teachers have that I'm not going to be able to work with this student, I don't have the skills, I don't have the knowledge. But I'm going to combine that actually with another question that was asked about volunteering and I know that, as I stated earlier, that's how I got into working with people of determination, through my volunteer work, and it certainly made it less scary for me when I entered the teaching profession, it just seemed like well of course I would have students of all abilities in my classroom. And so, I think, from kind of a two-pronged approach to this question, what, Ruby are you hoping to do to help educate teachers, but also for Marilena and Khala, what volunteer opportunities are there for educators or just social workers, other people within Abu Dhabi to get involved, to be a part of the change that's happening?

I think from our perspective, we have planned a series of workshops from looking at what are the categories of students of determination, thinking about those individual education healthcare plans, what do we need to include there, and also the role of staff within schools. So, we need to think about that as a holistic approach, rather than just for teachers, the teacher might be scared to have them in the classroom but however, if the Principle is, you know, as scared as that teacher then we're never going to move forward. So, we want to ensure that holistically we educate and we ensure that everybody in that school community as well as other students are also on board, and we've got a range of programs that we are going to… we're working with at the moment, to roll out, but certainly we've already worked quite closely with HOWLA and the Special Olympics team to look at training some of the teachers through the unified schools… the sports program, particularly for those, for those staff with the British Council. So, there's been a whole programme and that has started and certainly, you know, we've had staff across public private schools involved in that program, so we want to ensure that this is not just, you know, training done for that class teacher, that responsibility is not just there, it's not just with the special needs coordinator, it's across the board. And we want to start where perhaps students as well as staff would be more comfortable and I think sport is one of those areas where there's not academics linked to the outcomes, and often that breaks down barriers a lot easier. So, we've already started on some of these programs in collaboration with some of our partners and we will continue to develop further programs in collaboration with partners as well as roll out some workshops and through ourselves as ADEK.

Thank you, before we come to Khala, I actually wanted to see if I could bring Marilena into the discussion, just because one of the things you touched on, Ruby, was making principles comfortable in that holistic piece, and I was wondering, Marilena, are there words of wisdom, are there ways that you specifically talk to people about inclusion and accessibility that that can soften them up a little bit?

There is not a unique approach and there is a not unique way, it depends person to person, sometimes schools are very defensive because they say we know you are not a specialist in education and, of course, I'm not a specialist in education, I'm an advocate. But what, and this is a question for Ruby, Ruby, what do I do when I try to register children to schools and the school as a unique answer say we don't have resources, or we don't have knowledge, actually they don't they never say that we don't have knowledge, but we don't have resources how can we help this school to get resources? Can we refer you for training? What can we do together?

I think that's something that we are working, as I'd said, with our partners and that is something that we are looking to develop more strategically. So, we we want to ensure that we don't just roll out something that is just for, you know, just for special needs coordinators or inclusion leads, we want to ensure that this is for the whole school community and part of the people of determination strategy for Abu Dhabi. We have a role in education and it's not just for ADEK, it is for early childhood, it is for higher education, it's for the Ministry of Education and it's for Saide Higher Organisation and all of us working collaboratively along with organisations, such as the Special Olympics, along with our partners, such as the University of Birmingham and other local providers to ensure that we provide quality provision, we ensure that that training that is going to be rolled for staff within schools is actually going to ensure that they are comfortable and are going to include students in their classrooms and not compromise the quality or worry about that something that they're doing would be wrong. So, we want to make sure that the level of training that is provided uh is of a certain quality. And we also want to ensure that we get qualified staff and we can just roll out training, however, we do need to work with partners very closely, such as universities and higher education institutions, to ensure that there are qualified staff who understand what they need to do and also they are embedded within their professional development in the area of inclusion, that is absolutely critical if we're to make any change. We as the regulator can support that but we need, obviously, the staff to come on board with that.

Thank you so much, Ruby, and I have to say that Ruby is so very concerned about quality which makes us even more honoured to be working with with ADEK and I know that I have a few of her staff members in my course right now on Inclusion Special Education Needs and they're doing brilliantly. So, ADEK is investing in advocating and providing that quality quality education for their students and staff and I know we had a question come through in the question and answer about making that transition for the administrators and I would encourage you all to look into the programs that we have at the University of Birmingham but there are programs across the UAE, along with ADEK and KHDA and the Ministry of Education who are providing different opportunities, and so don't hesitate to be in touch. I don't want to lose Khala here, because I do think that there are some important ways for the community to get involved, and so, Khala, if you could just briefly talk, I know you answered on our question and answer but maybe for the public talk about other ways that people can get involved in different opportunities.

Well, I think, you know, Ruby touched upon the point of, you know, a teacher could be comfortable but the principle may not be and I think that, you know, Special Olympics is really at its heart, a grassroots organisation. So, we work at, you know, many different levels, but one way, Sarah, you're a great example of being involved as a volunteer, there are a lot of stories like that, and I think that where it's really important for people to recognise that as a community member, as a human being, you don't need special training to be a caring human being, and I think that Special Olympics provides, what Special Olympics can really provide is a non-threatening sort of entry point for a lot of people. So whereas, you know, bringing a person of determination to your office and asking you to employ this person in a full-time position can be very overwhelming to someone who doesn't have a background or a support system, but asking someone or presenting the opportunity to play football with a group of mixed, you know, group of individuals, it is very non-threatening and what we've seen, what I've seen in my work, in the last seven years is, you know, students come in and they'll say after a few sessions, oh my gosh I can't believe that someone who can't talk can be funny, you know, and they learn to connect with people who don't communicate in the same way, they learn they learn that someone who maybe doesn't do well in school, maybe doesn't speak well, maybe has to have velcro shoes can outplay them in football and this focusses everybody on what people can do, what their abilities are and sort of the challenges fade away. And I think that this is really an important component in all areas, because bringing these activities into the school environment, as we work with Ruby to do, really helps to just, you know, shift the culture and create this comfort zone on the student level, on the teacher level, you know. As Special Olympics we provide that support system, there's lots of training, there's lots of support, there's lots of structure and that allows people to come in and develop their own skills and their own comfort level. Which again, just enhances all of the efforts that, you know, Ruby is doing and Marilena is doing and the University of Birmingham is doing, in terms of training people. So, we really look that we're here to kind of help facilitate all of these efforts.

Well, I think that's such a beautiful way to go out. I certainly appreciate everybody's contribution to this discussion, I think that that all of you have brought up wonderful points and it's been great to watch the chat and see all sorts of people coming and applauding all of your efforts and all of the work that you're doing. I'm going to hand it back to Sanam and David to close us out, I would just like to give my sincere thank you to all three of you ladies for the work that you're doing and for our future collaborations. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah, and I'd like to just echo that as well, thank you so much to our three panellists for stimulating this discussion, with such an exciting range of things under discussion and actually underway as well, things actually happening as well. So important, so thank you all to our three panellists, and I say that on behalf of all the audience, I hope the audience is happy for me to do that. And I'd like to say thanks to Sarah too, because you played a fantastic juggling job of juggling the chat box and the Q&A box and our three panellists and keeping us all to time, so, thank you very much for that. And I see the chats still coming in, which is great so thank you so much. And I will, at this stage, hand back to Sanam. Thank you so much, David, and once again thank you very much for your time this evening, this concludes the event this evening. We have so many other events as part of Disability History Month at the University of Birmingham, so please do visit our website, we have the human library on Thursday, which is stories from the desert, and so we are going to be hearing from three families from across the UAE and and understanding how accessibility has changed their lives. So, once again, thank you and we look forward to seeing you all very soon, have a safe evening and …. salaam.