110 children aged 3 to 18 from different regions of the North Kazakhstan region study and live in a special boarding school in Petropavlovsk. These are children who are deaf since birth or who have lost hearing at a later age, most of them is disabled. AYALA Charity Foundation, with financial support from two Kazakhstani philanthropists, donated the modern Uniton Forte audio class set to this boarding school. The total budget of the project amounted to 4.7 million tenge.
According to the Ministry of labor and social protection of population, in Kazakhstan there are 4.5 thousand children with hearing impairments out of 87 thousand children with disabilities under the age of 18*, which is 1.5% of the total number of children in our country. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of children with disabilities, which over the past 7 years amounted to 2 percent. As of January 1, 2018, more than 147 thousand children and adolescents with special educational needs, which, among other things, include various hearing impairments, were reported in Kazakhstan.
The regional special boarding school for children with hearing impairments of the akimat of the North Kazakhstan region is one of the oldest institutions of special education in Kazakhstan. In 2018, it won "The best educational institution-2018" nomination according to the International Academy of Pedagogic Sciences and Innovative Technologies.
“Our boarding school celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. All these years, the activity of the teaching staff was aimed at overcoming the consequences of deafness, at developing hearing and speech, at social adaptation and preparing young people with hearing impairments for independent living after graduation. Thanks to the help of AYALA foundation, we now have the most modern audio class set, which will make the process of teaching children even more effective. There we plan to conduct frontal lessons on the development of auditory perception, on the formation of pronunciation, as well as subject online olympiads. We consider this the most efficient solution, since the maximum number of children from grades 2 to 12 will be covered. On behalf of the whole team, we want to thank everyone who helped to make the long-held dream of our school true,” Zhenis Tuleshuly Abilmazhin, a director of “The regional special (correctional) boarding school for children with hearing impairments” Municipal Public Institution said.
The audio class set provides the formation of a complete auditory-speech environment during classes. It can simultaneously engage up to 8 children. Workplaces for students are equipped with remotes with a built-in microphone. A teacher during the lesson can freely move around the classroom thanks to the radio microphone. Through a student’s remote control, a clear and high-quality sound from the teacher’s microphone, from the microphone of his remote control and the microphone of the remote controls of all other students in the classroom is transmitted to his\her hearing aid or headphones. It is also equipped with a light indicator for voice operation. This allows controlling the rhythm, pace of speech, pauses, as well as the joint and separate pronunciation of words and phrases. If necessary, a vibration stimulator is connected to one of the student’s panels for additional sensory support. The teacher’s control panel allows him\her to choose the presentation of the content in the mode of a lesson, of a lecture, make a survey of students from his\her place, and also single the voice of the teacher out from the background noise in the classroom for the students.
AYALA foundation presented the audio class set as part of “To special children - special attention” project. This project helps equip correctional nursery schools and boarding schools throughout Kazakhstan with special equipment to improve children's hearing, vision, and intellectual development. Since 2007, this project has covered more than 20 thousand children in 20 cities of Kazakhstan. The foundation donated correctional and therapeutic equipment to dozens of educational institutions, installed physical therapy rooms, interactive whiteboards and sandboxes, installed corrective speech therapy equipment and many other devices necessary to strengthen health and comprehensive development of children. The project continues, as every year the number of correctional institutions in our country grows.
*as of December 31, 2018, published on the website of Kursiv newspaper
