Tag: Autism

Autism speak

I thought that I’d give you a little insight as to the workings of an autistic child’s mind.

We had Easter eggs this week, similar to the ones pictured left, you know the ones, chocolate on the inside with a hard white coating.

Well, these were hard, impossible for a child to crack with their jaw, after a couple of tries the first child held his egg in his hand and banged it against the table, good idea, bad idea, the egg shattered into hundreds of pieces and scattered all over the floor!

Quick as a flash, the second child approached me with her egg and said “Uncle Soutie, would you hatch it for me?”

Who would have thought it? Certainly not me!

After goodness knows how many years running Autism Eastern Cape from my dining room, we finally have a proper home. Hats off to my wife and other dedicated members, as I mentioned previously, we (eventually) got a lottery grant, we’ve spent the money wisely, a full time field worker, a car, office equipment and furnishings but now… a new home!

Not really a ‘new’ home, but a proper home! A home where concerned family members have easy access, a home not 100 meters from Quest school, a home on a main thoroughfare, a home where the telephones are permanently staffed and a properly qualified person will talk to you.

As a wrote the Chairman’s report for this years AGM I quoted Neil Armstrong, “one small step for man….” and emphasized that just as the moon landing didn’t end space exploration our successes this year are just that, the culmination of years of hard work but just a small step forward towards our ultimate goal. Continue reading “Our (Autism East Cape) new home”

Some here may remember when I asked members to vote on the sign-writing for our Autism Van (here’s the post) it wasn’t a particularly difficult decision a simple 1 or 2.

To jog memories, here are the choices once again…

You may recall that charioteers voted overwhelmingly for ‘Option 1’

It wasn’t my choice, I preferred the more ‘subtle’ option 2.

In the true spirit of democracy, no AV votes, no PR, a simple first past the post, without my casting vote being invoked, I’m proud to inform you that we took delivery of our car today.

Here she is. Continue reading “Democracy African style”

I’ve been asked for a larger view and a description of our logo.

It was 13 years ago when we first got involved with the Quest School for Autism anything and everything to do with autistic children here in the Eastern Cape was very very basic, no support group, no community recognition, no meetings, etc. Other than the odd PTA at the school nothing existed.

We learned that some mothers in the early ’90’s had established a group (Eastern Cape Autism Association) but that it was defunct, dormant. We resurrected it.

To be fair, it was those mothers who did the original ground work to get Quest School established (a private initiative in those days.)

We obviously needed a logo, our secretary found this, showed my wife and I and we adopted it, no other proposals, no confusion a simple ‘hey, we like it, that’ll do!’. Life is so simple when Continue reading “Our logo”

Remember my Good news post about our lottery giving us money? Well we’ve got it and we’re spending it, amongst other things we’ve bought a new car. Here’ s where you come in, we can’t decide on the artwork Mrs. S and I have narrowed it down to two options but we’re split on which one to choose, which do you think we should go with?

Vote on the next page, thanks… Continue reading “Vote here (please)”