“I like to talk very much, and especially about our problems, but people remember us only on the World Sight Day or on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities,” said the
Coordinator of the National Leadership Institute, a disabled person, Mr. Sipan Asatryan during his meeting with the participants of the TEMPUS ASPIRE project at the Pedagogical University, highlighting several problems of persons with special education needs.
During the meeting Mr. Sipan Asatryan referred to his childhood stating the reasons why he came from Tchambarak to Yerevan in the core of which actually was the issue of his education.
In fact, in the hard process of receiving secondary and then higher education, Sipan and his family had to undergo a lot of difficulties, such as pity, psychological pressure, movement, absence of the required conditions for education.
However, despite the teething troubles, Mr. Sipan Asatryan mentions that the disabled should not be treated as a week class, and then he adds that the attitude of the society strongly depends on the behavior of people with disabilities.
“The society is not properly informed about the problems the disabled have to face, as a result of which it becomes quite troublesome for the latter to integrate into the society”, Mr. Sipan Asatryan mentioned and put in with excitement that contrary to the old people, the youth are more knowledgeable and conscious, supportive and tolerant towards people with disabilities that are next to them.
Afterwards, the participants of the TEMPUS ASPIRE project asked their questions to Sipan about his further activities on
professional development as well as continuing education abroad.
More on this, the lecturers of the Faculty of Special Education Ms. Lilit Karapetyan and Zarouhi Haroutyunyan have already passed a training within the framework of the TEMPUS ASPIRE project; at this stage of the project they are providing trainings and sharing their own experience with the other participants of the project who come from other universities together with the representatives of the Pedagogical University and other Non-Governmental Organizations.
“Unfortunately, the Pedagogical University does not have proper conditions for students with special needs of education starting with the movement conveniences up to the special literature,” Ms. Lilit Karapetyan Mentioned in her interview to the armspu.am and added that it was also foreseen to establish a center for the special needs of people with disabilities.
