The Window of Heaven Foundation will promote, advocate and protect the right of children with special abilities to a wholesome physical and intellectual development based on zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities.

 

The Window of Heavens Foundation considers zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities as natural and highly effective forms of support to the development of children with special abilities.

Through years of evidence based practice, the Window of Heavens Foundation has been documenting the development achieved by children who have benefitted from the work in its experimental farm.

In its new phase of development, the Foundation wishes to combine its experimental and empirical work, with documenting the development achieved by the beneficiaries, and promote zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities, as a fundamental right for each child from its start in life or when the special condition is identified.

 

Establishing zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities as a fundamental right for every child from the start in life or when their condition has been identified, should be seen in the same natural way as early and basic education is seen as a right for every child.

As such, zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities should be established as public policy and as a State policy measure, ensuring access to such services to all who need it.

 

The Foundation would like to promote that zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities not only be seen as a therapeutic or a public health measure, but as a fundamental educational measure for the physical and intellectual development for children with special abilities, and thus, should be established as a right in compliance with the measures established in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

 

The Foundation will thus promote these measures with Ministries of Social Development, of Public Health, and with Ministries responsible for Basic Education, either directly with them at national level, or through international or regional organizations linked to the protection of the rights of the child, or devoted to the promotion and protection of economic, social and cultural rights. This will be done in order to mainstream the protection of the rights of children with special abilities, particularly in the areas of social development, public health and education.

 

In collaboration with international organizations, the Foundation will promote the development of methodological frameworks as well as the promotion of the establishment of physical facilities which will enable the full enjoyment of this right to each child with special abilities.

 

Furthermore, the Foundation will contribute and promote the development of indicators for ongoing monitoring, and for evaluating the efficiency of zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities, so as to provide the basis for establishing these measures as a fundamental right for children with special abilities, and as a State policy measure, to be financed with public funds from the areas of social development, public health and education.

 

The Foundation recognizes the right established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to spiritual development and values for each child. The faith-based values which underpins the work of the Foundation, gives it the possibility to insert into all its activities, the promotion of ethical and spiritual values, with no discrimination. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes furthermore, the importance of these values as non-verbal forms of communication with children with special abilities.

The Foundation considers that this right to spiritual development and of values for children with special abilities, without any discrimination, is fundamental part of the most comprehensive possible development for these children, but also, its promotion contributes to create societies which do not devalue, denigrate or discriminate, but rather value, appreciate and receive the enormous love and ethical values that children with special abilities glow with when treated as individuals with equal rights, and that this equality of treatment requires that all in society learn and recognize to interact in the emotional language in which they are able to communicate and excel at doing so.

 

The Foundation recognizes that in mayor parts of the world, the situation of children with special abilities continues to be appalling, and that their rights continue to be breached systematically, on a massive scale, daily, with societies and States which continue tolerating these breaches of their rights, with an emotional indifference at their exclusion, and a lack of recognition and investment in generating awareness of their rights, in making visible the breach of rights their situation implies, or in allocating the resources required for their development in a comprehensive manner as individuals, within the context of their special abilities.

Even though the capacity of the Foundation is limited in relation to the magnitude of the exclusion children with special abilities live daily all over the world, the Foundation will seek to promote alliances and attain the mainstreaming in international humanitarian and development programs the conditions and plight of children with special abilities, and that it be an integral part of any program which promotes social development, public health or education, be it in emergency, humanitarian or development situations.

In this light, the

 

Foundation seeks as an integral part of its mission, the promotion of a changed vision in which every citizen sees every child with special abilities as a citizen with rights, and not the object of random charity, and ensure that from the family unit to the highest levels of the State, and that their rights be protected and promoted, including the recognition that all their physical, emotional and spiritual needs are indivisible elements of the comprehensive development within the context of their special ability.

Within this framework, the Foundation will promote awareness raising in society, in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of the need to respect and learn to communicate in non verbal ways with those with special abilities, and as part of these forms of communication, acknowledge the extraordinary results which naturally develop from the introduction and systematic use of zoo-interaction, aqua-experience and equestrian activities.