Al Noor Launches Community Awareness Campaign About Special Needs Children's Competency Levels and Learning Abilities

Centre’s ‘Literacy for All’ programme hopes to create awareness and raise funds to improve special children’s reading abilities

Dubai, 7th May, 2014: Al Noor Training Centre for Children With Special Needs has launched a multi-layered campaign designed to create community awareness about the competency levels of children with learning challenges. The campaign also includes fund-raising initiatives towards improving the Centre’s reading and learning infrastructure in equipment and know-how required to help children improve their lifestyles and long-term community integration. 

The campaign got under way last week with the screening of a movie filmed and acted by Al Noor’s children at the inaugural Dubai Children’s Film Festival. Titled ‘Slam Downs’ the 15-minute-long film charts the journey of two kids with special needs into mainstream society.

Al Noor Training Centre for Children With Special Needs has also co-founded The Dubai Bookmark Initiative ( https://www.facebook.com/#!/ReadABookDay ), a social media-centric community movement designed to encourage the habit of reading books amongst the UAE’s adults and children alike.
The initiative’s aim is to convey that reading books broadens horizons for every member of our community, including children with learning difficulties.
With literacy being at the core of Al Noor’s educational and training programmes for severely and multiple challenged students, the training centre requires much needed investment in the introduction of new technologies that help challenged children better interact with books and text in general. Funds can also help the Centre’s staff receive training to acquire the specialist knowledge and adopt certain teaching techniques to support the literacy programme.

“Our ‘Literacy for All’ programme includes on-going relevant follow up with teachers, therapists and parents to sustain and maintain its efficacy with the ultimate aim to help children better integrate with the society and improve their quality of life and that of their loved ones,” said Isphana Al-Khatib, Director of Al Noor.
One initiative designed to raise funds for the programme belongs to co-founder of The Dubai Bookmark Initiative, Georgios Kotsolios, a senior Dubai-based Public Relations executive. As the author of the self-published book titled ‘Back to the Future of Marketing’, Kotsolios will be offering all proceeds of his book sold by July 30th towards Al Noor’s ‘Literacy for All’ programme. ( An independent review of the book can be found here: http://bit.ly/1jzyP5G )

“The Dubai Bookmark Initiative is the ideal forum for us to help create awareness about our children’s literacy capacity and from our part we will ensure that the movement continues to grow and with it, awareness of our cause,” added Isphana Al-Khatib.
“Our aim is to educate the UAE’s population about the scientifically sound fact that our children can actually be literate and should be encouraged to cultivate the habit of reading,” she said.