White Hands Centre for Assistive Technology & Rehabilitation | 2015
The challenges we face in our lives often lead us on the path to success. Aisha Alawi Hafidh Ba’aboud is a mother of a child with disability. She sought specific specialised child care and rehabilitation services for her son, but was unable to find suitable providers locally. Determined to get the best possible treatment for her child, she regularly travelled abroad for extended periods of time in order to find the specialised treatment and rehabilitation services needed.
Over the years, she found other Omani families who also faced the same challenge of not being able to get qualified local services for their children who were diagnosed with disabilities. Realising the lack of local specialised rehabilitation services for disabled children, Aisha developed a vision to establish a specialised centre that caters to the rehabilitation needs of people with disability in Oman, and pursued bringing that vision to reality immediately. That’s how the White Hands Centre for Assistive Technology & Rehabilitation was born; a social enterprise which addresses the needs of a very special segment in our community.
Commenting on her experience Ba’aboud says, “No one can really understand the needs of people with disability unless they are living with them. Unfortunately, the services provided locally did not cover many of their real needs, and the families could not gain the required skills and training on how to best deal with their patients. Thus, I thought of establishing a specialised centre to provide these services.”
Aisha did not have any experience in business, but her strong determination was enough to overcome the challenges and achieve success. Her visit to Zubair SEC was a major turning point for her, as her idea fits perfectly with the criteria of the Centre in integrating entrepreneurship with social impact; a principle based on establishing business projects catering to the needs of society and helping to achieve sustainability and growth. Aisha joined Zubair SEC and her project was soon selected for the Direct Support Programme.
Through the Programme’s support Aisha was able to develop her Centre, which is the only one in Oman specialised in providing advanced comprehensive diagnosis and therapy services for people suffering from Irlen light sensitivity that affects %12 of the world’s population. The Centre also offers rehabilitation and care services for people with different disabilities, including autistic patients.
White Hands Centre also provides comprehensive solutions with regard to rehabilitation and training, and provides aid equipment needed by families of people with disability. The Centre provides special training for the parents on how to deal with their children and take care of them in the best way possible. The White Hands Centre for Assistive Technology & Rehabilitation also provides consultancy on buildings specifications that cater to the special needs of people with disability. Aisha notes, “With the help of Zubair SEC I have put a business plan in place for the coming years, in addition to the needed marketing planning. I am looking forward to covering all the Willayas of Oman, as I know how families with disabled individuals suffer. I will try my best to provide them with help to overcome their own challenges.”
White Hands Centre integrates social impact with the economic dimension through a framework that generates sustainability and scalability of impact. This is the criteria Zubair SEC is looking for and continuously encourages its members to follow; strongly believing that the true success of entrepreneurship is achieved when it serves the community.