Half of the disabled kichwa children and youth in Napo still without education

To be able to carry out our work it's necessary, if boring, to know some numbers. That is why FACE (Fundación Adelanto Comunitario Ecuatoriano) has carried out two cencuses of disabled children and youth, under 15 years old, of kichwa nationality in Napo province. 

The first cencus was done in the beginning of 2011 and the second one in the end of 2012. According to the cencus, done in 2012 there are 508 disabled kichwa children and youth in the three cantons, Tena, Archidona and Arosemena Tola of Napo province.

These children and youth are all situated in the area that is covered by Napo provinces Bilingual Education Departmen, DIPEIB-Napo. 46% of them are currently studing in school. Taking in consideration that Bilingual schools accept students from 2 years on, this means that a gross majority of children and youth that are of school age aren't recieving the education they are entitled to.

 Looking at the numbers we can see that almost half of them, 49% to be exact, has an intelectual disability. 21% has a physical disability and 10% has a disability related to language. 8% of them have an auditory impairment and 6% has a visual impariment.

At the moment DIPEIB-Napo has aproximately 30 teachers in 25 schools working with students with special needs. These students are situated in inclusive and special education classrooms in the regular school. In total DIPEIB-Napo has 114 school. The 255 children and youth that aren't reciving education live in different indigenous communities situated around the over 80 schools that aren't in the program.

This is the reason why a census is so necessary. We need information of where the disabled children and youth are exactly located and this way we can open new classrooms and ask for new teachers for them.