Raising community awareness of dyslexia by empowering parents and teachers as important components of society

Kristiantini Dewi, Sp A

Asosiasi Disleksia Indonesia, Indonesia

Abstract

Dyslexia awareness among Indonesian’s people is still low. As an archipelago country, that has many islands, our challenge to raise awareness equally in every part of the country is really tough. Due to limitation of manpower resource, Dyslexia Association of Indonesia (DAI) committed to empower parents of dyslexic children with evidence-based knowledge about dyslexia, and encourage them to teach and share this knowledge to other parents in their communities. These parents gathered in a so called “Dyslexia Parent Support Group” (DPSG) that sited in every big island. DPSG has been such significant help in creating awareness and promoting inclusive education services in Indonesia. On top of that, Dyslexia Association of Indonesia also reached teachers as one of important component in the society to raise dyslexia awareness among them. A series of Educational Classes and Scholarship of Dyslexia Workshop has been done on Bandung, Jakarta and Aceh that delivered the knowledge of child developmental milestone, dyslexia and its related condition. Those teachers who had completed all courses got credit as Dyslexia Friendly Teachers and they had to spread their knowledge and skill to other teachers in their own communities.

Keywords: dyslexia, awareness, community, parents, teachers