Several activities including singing, dancing and handicrafts are part of the initiatives of the Desembarco del Granma special education school, in the city of Guantanamo, for the social inclusion of children and young people with Down syndrome in this territory.
This program enables the development of communication and motor skills based on the potential of the more than fifty students with these characteristics grouped in that center, the only one of its kind in the province and one of the three existing in Cuba.
Speech –therapist, Mercedes Osaría Muños, with about four decades of experience in the work with children suffering from mental retardation, said that from "the craft workshop" they make decorations with paper and learn to make carpets, stitches, to perforate, paste and cut, among other crafts.
Carlos Maldonado Rodríguez, professor of physical education and school sports, said that his thirty years of work have been in this teaching, in which he has obtained a promising result, such as the recent national badminton olympiad in which sixteen teams participated.
Students with Down syndrome also participate in gymnastic events, games, traditional songs, plays and dramatizations, activities that contribute to socializing and improving hand movement.
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder, caused by alterations in the 21st chromosome and causes alterations associated with physical and intellectual disability. That´s why the Desembarco del Granma School in Guantanamo serves more than fifty children with this type of mental retardation and physical-motor disabilities.
Translation: Ilia Charon