Nour Al Alam is a charitable association, which was founded in 2003. It supports individuals from different nationalities, spiritual backgrounds and age groups. The center offers health care services to children and adults with learning difficulties, psychological and cognitive disabilities. This is done through the services of health care professionals who have cognitive and procedural expertise in different areas of care delivery. The multidisciplinary team of the center includes 25 professionals including physical therapists, psychomotor therapists, special educators, psychologists, psychiatrists and speech therapists. The center has reached 600 sessions per week and still has a great demand that needs to be met from schools and parents. The center is dependent on funds, financial aids and discounts for furniture, maintenance and other repairs, along with materials, toys and equipment for therapy. Without these funds, the center cannot take in the number of patients already present neither develop its boundaries and accept the ones on the waiting list.
It is important to highlight that the aim of this non-profit organization is to reach the individuals from low social economic status and be their support financially to develop their cognitive and emotional well-being. The works with students with low educational performance, attention deficit, hyperactivity, oral language difficulty, speech delay, written language difficulty, math and logical reasoning difficulties, sensory difficulties, fine and gross motor delays, muscle tonicity disorders, coordination difficulties and much more. The vision is to develop its services and spread knowledge related to learning difficulties in schools and to parents. Moreover, to develop its teams competence to cover the massive need of the population they have been collaborating with different organisations.
Aflatoun has been an active partner facilitating workshops with the association of the local YMCA and courses to the team and has demonstrated new approaches for teaching in school settings. This goes along with Nour Al Alam’s workshops that focus on different therapeutical strategies specific to this population. Another vision of the organisation is to work collaboratively to develop Aflatoun’s curriculum with fine adjustments to meet students with different learning difficulties and disorders in schools. This hand in hand work is meant to develop this educational movement and facilitate the integration of the special needs in the society for a better future.
One of the team members shared that, “Though the work is not easy, the income is minimal, the suffering of the clients is heavy and the effort put into this work is beyond our limits! The smile of each child after a session, the relief of a parent and the joy of a client is more than enough for us to strive for more. For the spirit that is moving us to work is not derived from the external income but the purity of the heart to serve.”
