BYU professor Tim Smith helps run a care center for disabled children in Uganda and is currently working to build a playground to fit the children’s needs.
Tim Smith is a professor of counseling psychology and special education at BYU and has been involved in humanitarian causes in Uganda since 2011.
He said he ran a home-based service that deployed a social worker to visit children with disabilities in their homes until 2020.
“At the time, there were no services for children with disabilities in the region where we were living,” Smith said, “so it was an unmet need.”
Now, Smith is board director at the Ashraf Ability Centre which he runs “entirely separate from BYU,” he said.
When he realized he would need a building to provide additional services, Smith coordinated with a BYU special education graduate and created the Ashraf Ability Centre outside of Lugazi, Uganda.
According to its website, the centre provides education, physical and occupational therapy, medical and nursing services, and home support.
Allison Lund, a recent BYU graduate, has assisted Smith at centre for the last three years. She said the center provides additional support and education for the families of disabled children.
“In Uganda, having a disability is a unique concept. They don't know much about disabilities, and so we've helped to create a community for the parents there and for the families,” Lund said. “We help to empower them and give them training on how to help their children.”
Providing love for the children matters as much as the physical care and special education the centre provides, Smith said.
“These children are often misunderstood, neglected or seen as cursed, but they light up when they feel and recognize true, authentic love,” Smith said. “It's a light in their eyes, their soul is connecting with someone else in a way that truly is empowering, enabling and beyond inclusive — it's bonding.”
Smith has been working to build a playground for the children at the centre and is currently collaborating with Chad Kennedy, a landscape architect who specializes in designing what he calls “inclusive playgrounds.”
Kennedy has worked on multiple inclusive playgrounds around the United States and at the Gem Foundation in Kampala, Uganda, he said.
The playground for the Gem Foundation and the playground for the Ashraf Ability Centre are designed to meet the standards set in the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines, Kennedy added.
Inclusive playgrounds, Kennedy said, need to be designed around many different disabilities, including children with walking impediments, wheelchairs, vision impairments and children on the autism spectrum or with other related sensory processing disorders.
“We try to avoid ramps where we can because ramps can be a challenge to get up,” Kennedy said. “We're designing to less than a 5% grade because the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines say that if it's greater than 5%, then you need a ramp.”
For children who are blind or have low visibility, Kennedy is careful to have a clear contrast between different surfaces as well as guide ropes and handrails to help kids know where they are in a three-dimensional space, he said.
Kennedy wants to include areas that provide seclusion to help those on the autism spectrum to self-regulate as well as areas that provide extra stimuli for kids with sensory processing disorders.
“There's a spectrum there of someone who can only handle a little bit of sensory input and someone who needs a lot of sensory input,” Kennedy said. “We're often planning for spaces that can provide both.”
The inclusion of drums in the playground is one thing Kennedy said he wanted to include as a way to “pull their culture into the play space.”
One factor that has made designing the playground challenging for Kennedy is the relatively small space that the centre has available for the playground.
“In this case, we're pretty limited on space and so we're doing the best we can to provide some form of play,” Kennedy said. “It's just meant for joy and fun, and you're trying to just be a kid, right?”
Smith spoke of some of the benefits he and the students who join him receive from their work at the centre.
“We're all one family, so inclusion is essential here in Utah and our public schools as much as it is necessary,” Smith said. “We are being selfish in our practices here in this nation, and if we're truly to benefit from the gifts that God has given individuals with different abilities, it needs to start with letting our children be together in classrooms.”