Research shows that over 50% of children born with a cleft palate will require speech therapy in order to participate fully in school and in the community.
Transforming Faces (TF) is proud of the team at Yekatit 12 hospital who ensure that their cleft patients have access to high-quality speech therapy as an essential part of their Comprehensive Cleft Care (CCC) program. This support has recently been extended, through a partnership with Project Harar, to equip Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) workers to provide speech and language support to patients living far from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.
Ethiopia’s population is over 100 million, yet the very first class of speech and language therapists (SLT) in the country will not graduate until early 2019. TF is delighted to announce the creation of the very first SLT video training materials
available in the widely-spoken Ethiopian languages of Amharic and Afaan Oromo.
Designed by Teachers College, Columbia University SLT expert, Dr. Cate Crowley and filmed by Abie Sidell, these practical videos are modeled after the speech therapy training resources that Dr. Crowley pioneered for The Leaders Project. The Yekatit 12 Speech Team of Berhane Abera and Hirut Mengistu, who also figure
prominently in these resources.