It is a great integration and a positive sign of the UAE’s progress towards its goal of improving the lives of people with special needs. Fourteen students from the Rashid Paediatric Therapy Centre, after a 10-month training stint, are going to be employed by a leading hospitality chain in Dubai in its housekeeping, cooking and hotel administration departments. This is a great development. The key to empowering special needs individuals’ transition into the societal mainstream lies in providing them vocational training beyond academic learning. This alone will ensure that they are defined by their careers and not by their disabilities. This integration works on another important level too — interaction with society becomes a daily ritual, an advantage that is as much their birthright as it is of others. This will help them cultivate their confidence and people skills on a daily basis, erasing the margins that separate them from society at large.
More and more corporate entities in the UAE must devise such inclusive employment policies for individuals with special needs and collectively work towards making the UAE a country where such integration is the norm rather than the exception.
