Ashley Dean and Professor Barbara Smith, Counseling Psychology and Special Education

Penilla can be found along a back road, half way up a steep hill on the outskirts the urban city Iași, Romania. From the outside, the building’s yellow panels look much newer than the blanket of cement that seems to cover every other structure within a 20-mile radius, which is intriguing itself; yet the building’s novelty goes far deeper.

The Penilla Infantile Rehabilitation Center is a project of a non-government organization known as the Marantha Aid Association—a school of innovative constituents within a developing nation. The Penilla Center first opened to accept children with psychological and physical disabilities on June 1, 1994. Augmented by its principle benefactors from Sweden, the Center has cutting-edge technological equipment and qualified staff members in order to provide sufficient shelter, education and care for the children. The Center’s aim is to offer support and resources to the children and their families that will foster the achievement of five basic goals: (1) to prevent disabled children with families from being abandoned in institutions, (2) to facilitate children’s integration into the mainstream of Romanian society, (3) to increase their independence, (4) to change the mindset of the public and promote acceptance of the disabled in the family and community, and (5) to be recognized as a role model for programs addressing the needs of disabled children. These aims are accomplished through individualized and comprehensive rehabilitation programs, developed for each child by a team that consists of a psychologist, a speech therapist, a pediatrician, a neuropsychiatrist, a physical therapist, an educator and a social assistant. With parental involvement, goals are established and the means to accomplish them are designed. Through this collaboration of efforts, children with autism (and similar disabilities that intervene with a child’s ability to interact and learn) are helped to reach their full potential. With its advanced system and facilities in an environment historically relevant to my topic of interest, as well as its genesis independent of governmental influences, Penilla Infantile Rehabilitation Center is the ideal case to observe in order to further synthesize information about establishing resources for children with disabilities in developing countries and their inner workings.

I traveled to Iași in late April as a part of BYU’s Romania International Internship to volunteer in an orphanage, Sfantul Andrei Centru de Placement, whose governing principles initially seemed as far from Penilla’s as I would be from home—like many of the institutions in the country. A product of my dual interests in Special Education and International Development, this project focused on Penilla and all its infrastructural ramifications. Through regular involvement at Penilla, I aimed to find answers to questions regarding the initial set-up and continual maintenance of such a place. My thoughts were that finding the answers to these questions would enable the creation of more schools founded upon goals similar to Penilla’s in developing countries, where the numbers of individuals with disabilities made up 80 percent of the world’s disabled population. (Unicef, 2008)

As good and well-planned as my intentions were prior to my departure, the research process did not go according to plan. Although Dr. Eti Vasilache, head of Penilla Infantile Rehabilitation Center, had replied to my email with her approval for my plan, I arrived in Romania to discover that she had left the country for two or more months and that she had made herself unmistakably unavailable. As I could not begin volunteering at Penilla without her approval, this left me to find other means for gathering information.

Sfantul Andrei, as it turns out, was my answer. Through persistent questioning, I learned that Sfantul Andrei had a school on the main level of the building that was open to the public. This day school offered families in the community a place for the education of their children with disabilities at a more affordable price than Penilla, and was purported to model the Penilla framework as well. With some help, I was able to volunteer at this school for four hours each week throughout the summer. While the government-instituted infrastructural aspects of the school differed greatly from those of Penilla, I was able to observe several teachers and ask questions of them regarding their teaching strategies and the set up of the classroom within the school. Although this is not the research I had anticipated doing, I learned my things about teaching children with disabilities that surprised and inspired me.

Before the semester ended, I was able to interview Dr. Vasilache regarding the school and what it stood for, yet my interest in infrastructure had long been overwhelmed by something that seemed more pressing. Because of the unexpected change in my plans, I began researching Special Education in developing countries, rather than the infrastructures of the schools themselves. My experience with Sfantul Andrei unexpectedly taught me that the ideals of the school paralleled our own values regarding Special Education in the United States than did those of the orphanage, although the two programs were housed under the same roof. I am eager to continue this research in order to learn whether these ideals persist in other schools for children with disabilities throughout other developing countries, and, if so, how they can be furthered in order to help all children live up to their potential.

Overall, this was an invaluable learning experience for me. Not only did I learn how to adapt and adjust to unexpected changes in my research plans, but I also have realized what knowledge will benefit me most in my pursuit of furthering international Special Education. I am now a semester in to the Special Education program and will soon begin my International Development minor. This research has laid an open-minded foundation for the integration and application of all the things I have and will learn in those programs.

References

• Unicef (2008). Levels of Reported Disability Vary Widely Across Countries. Retrieved February 19, 2009, from Childinfo: Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women Web site: http://www.childinfo.org/disability_statistics.html