Raising special achievers

First is expression, which aims to showcase the abilities and works of artists and children with disability.

Special Achievers founders give hope to children with unique needs.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. We believe it takes a city to raise one with disability,” state the first two lines of the “who we are” menu of the website of Special Achievers. It is a statement that reflects the concern and passion of this non-government organization (NGO) that “helps children and youth with disability reach their potential,” according to Karen Ann Navarro, co-founder and executive director.

Danielle Joanne Raymundo, mentorship head and also co-founder, explains that Special Achievers has two programs. “First is expression, which aims to showcase the abilities and works of artists and children with disability and second is mentorship which is the art program in which we try to teach them different skills and hone their artistic talents to help equip them for life.”

In this season of joy, Daily Tribune invited both Karen and Danielle to guest in Tribune Now’s Thursday afternoon lifestyle online show, “Spotlight,” hosted by editor Jojo G. Silvestre and writer Kat Llemit to allow viewers a better understanding of the concerns of families, mentors and support groups of our children with special needs, even as Daily Tribune hopes to encourage everyone to help enable Special Achievers children with disability to express themselves and contribute to society in their own exceptional way.

Daily Tribune (DT): Tell us how you founded Special Achievers.

Karen Navarro (KN): Actually it’s very personal. It’s a passion project for all of us for the last six years. I’m an occupational therapist and I work with children with autism and Down Syndrome. So I have this patient. I started seeing him when he was two until he was seven. So, I began thinking of what else I could do for this child. I was then seeing him twice a week for occupational therapy.

Then I realized he was good at drawing. During therapy, he would move around for 30 to 45 minutes and then he’d sit down for 10 minutes. But when he was drawing, I saw that he could sit down for the whole hour. And that was a big thing for him already. So I told the mom, he could train in the arts because he could really focus here. He had such a long sitting span when he was drawing.

And the mom agreed. After two years, he began painting and his works were really beautiful. And these accumulated in their home, so his mom asked me, “What do we do with these paintings?”

That’s when I worked with Danielle and the other co-founders. I asked them if we could start an NGO. What if we put the art work in a canvass bag and sell it? At that time, the mother didn’t want to sell his paintings. They were very precious to the family. It was only later that they agreed to sell his paintings because they would not fit in their home anymore.

We started with an “echo” bag project. We asked our friends to post the bag on Facebook. The bags showed two paintings of children with autism. The response was positive. People would bring it to London, US, Japan and so on. And then the media featured us and one of the bags. It was gifted to an owner of a pharmaceutical company and she asked if we had more artists. She wanted more artists and more artworks. So, from two artists, it became 10, and we featured 18 artworks.

We started with 500 bags. The next year, 12,000 copies of the calendars showing artworks were printed. We sent 1,000 abroad and distributed 11,000 to doctors all over the Philippines.

SPECIAL Achievers artist Nicole Allysa Co models her artwork on an “echo” bag.

DT: How do you find children? Do you have a classroom, do you have a workshop?

KN: For the expression program, we find artists who are already good at what they’re doing. So we call for artworks, because there are a lot of children with autism that are really good with painting and visual arts. And since I’m a consultant in a clinic and Danielle has her own clinic, our community is really small so in our community, we ask the parents, we ask our co-therapists if there are artists with disabilities. We literally got a truckload of artworks. Out of a thousand artworks, we chose 18. We had to review the artworks and then we chose.

Danielle Raymundo (DR): We developed the mentorship program because we wanted to bring it to communities and public schools because we were thinking this could be something helpful for children in a SPED program. So teacher Karen contacted San Antonio National High School and they said yes. And we told them that we were going to do this pilot run program. So, our program is in five areas. We had dancing, music, theater arts, visual arts and then chocolate making for culinary arts. We just really wanted to put arts into the kids’ lives. But the thrust of Special Achievers is to hone the strength, like let’s focus on what the child can do rather what they can’t do because most of the time we always focus on the limitations.

DT: Oh, before we proceed further, can you tell us about your day jobs? What makes you qualified for this kind of volunteer work?

DR: I’m a speech language pathologist so what we do is to treat and evaluate children. Anything related to communication. My profession comes in handy in this kind of volunteer work.

KN: I’m an occupational therapist. And I work in pediatrics, children and youth with disabilities. So from two years old up and my oldest patient is 23 years old. We’re in the clinics so, we’re paid per patient per hour.

We help people get back to their occupation. For kids a lot of our patients don’t know how to play and playing is very important because that’s how they develop their skills. So basically on a regular basis I just play with kids so I can teach them skills. So I am really used to being around kids with specific needs.

SPED students from San Antonio National High School with Timmy Cruz at the “Possible” documentary launch at SM Mall of Asia.

DT: Back to the Special Achievers, who is supporting you?

KN: This September, funding from SM Cares came in so we’re continuing with two programs: dance and music. So now we’re trying to fund ourselves. We have events and we sell merchandise so we can continue our program at San Antonio.

DT: Why are you, girls, engaged in voluntary work? You could do something else.

KN: For me this is really a passion project, this is something that I really want to do and if I don’t do it I feel like I couldn’t live with myself.

DN: I also am into the arts so for me, it’s a combination of two things that I like to do. So part of it is helping and part of it is doing art. So I just really enjoy doing it.