$636 raised

San Manuelito is a Special Needs School, based in the town of San Ramon, a 10-minute drive from the FIMRC project base in La Merced. It has capacity for around 30 children, aged 4-18 with a variety of special needs (physical and developmental). Although the teachers have specifically trained to work in a special needs environment, they are not trained in some of the specific needs of the children (particularly autism) and children are placed in classrooms by age, not by disability. This is particularly stressful for the autistic children, who do not cope very well with the amount of noise, and because there is only one trained teacher per classroom, the children are not able to have any time on their own to play or relax and some of them are exhibiting challenging behaviour as a result of this (this is stressful for both the child, and the teacher).

As well as FIMRC supporting the school with a communication training program to assist in better recognizing the specific needs of each child, we would like to build a 'Rewards Relaxation Corner' in each classroom. This would be an area where each child may be given time and space to spend alone, to look at books, relax, listen to music etc without the interruption of another child. This would be a calming technique to reward the child for good behavior whilst giving them the time and space (and time and space for the teacher) to calm down and relax.
There are three classrooms and we would like to build one “Rewards Relaxation Corner” in each classroom.