Dwight Cooper, aged 13, does not say much. Instead he leads other children through his actions. Their eyes following his movements, the taekwondo class shadows him step-by-step. Whenever a student makes a mistake, it does not prompt admonishment from Dwight. Instead his style is to pause the session, walk over and demonstrate the correct… Read more →←
Author: Ross Sheil
Smiling children are running left and right, bouncing off the walls inside a community centre in downtown Kingston, where energetic primary school students are enjoying ‘Edusport’, a games-based way of learning that is spreading across Jamaica. “This looks like it’s uncoordinated mayhem going on, but it’s not,” says their… Read more →←
My name is Courtney Greaves, I am eight years old and I want to be that voice for children who are voiceless. I like to listen to the news and if I hear something about a child I just get a piece of paper and write it down and put in a poem form and I will let my mother video it so I won’t forget it. The other day there was a girl… Read more →←
We have just arrived at a classroom in Denham Town, Kingston when an excited boy runs outside. Afew moments later he bolts back into the room, and soon after he is calmly leading a host of other young children in relaxation techniques. “Breathe deep!” he instructs, and everyone follows his lead – taking a long breath in and then… Read more →←
In that photo, I am proud of my son Kyle and where we are. We made it to 17! That was on his birthday on March 17. I want to show off to the world that he has autism but he’s also a person – and he’s mine! Kyle was born in 2002, and four years later another autism parent and I started a support group to help other parents, which… Read more →←
What you are looking at in this photo is a model of what love can do. An appreciation for the magnitude of their progress and the determination it took to get this far. Tegan and Taigan are 13. Tegan has severe autism, and Taigan is high functioning. Tegan is non-verbal. He’ll make simple sentences but for the most part he doesn’t… Read more →←
This photo represents a significant milestone for our family: Sean who has autism recently turned 10 and just to see him smile into the camera was a big thing, because for the first five or six years he refused to make regular eye contact. So we had lots of photos of our first daughter but not many of him looking into the camera. Today… Read more →←
My son Adrian has severe autism, and on a scale of 1 to 10 I would say I love him 11. I have a very soft spot for him because he’s a very loving person. Even when autism makes him get frustrated and angry, he will just touch my face and say, ‘Did I hurt you? I am so sorry.’ Those little things just melt your heart and you just… Read more →←
Eleven years of Eve for Life is a time of real reflection. When we started on this journey, my co-founder Pat Watson and I, we were giving up the comfort of our careers because we knew this work had to be done. We could never have known that we would reach this far. We are at our Mentor Mom retreat as I write this, and on our special day… Read more →←
When I volunteered for Fight for Peace, I thought I was just going to be coaching taekwondo. But now I see that with sports you can change young people, and you can change their families. You can even change a community. Our Unity and Peace programme runs in six communities in Kingston, which can sometimes be in conflict with each other… Read more →←
