The Gleaner - 'Autistic children are suffering' - Canadian man hopes to bring wind of change

November 26, 2012

While pointing out that Jamaica is replete with "anecdotal stories" of abuse being meted out to children affected by autism, a father is calling for more to be done to rescue these children. With this in mind, Richard Phillips is on a drive to "develop a national programme" to educate teachers on how to deal with children affected by the condition.

Phillips, a Jamaican by birth who also has a son affected by the condition, said he is in dialogue with overseas entities who have expressed interest in funding a programme to help rescue these children and shed the stigma attached to the condition. Coupled with the "anecdotal stories" he has read in the local papers, Phillips said his passion to bring about change is also fed by personal experience.

HURTFUL LABEL

Richard's son Liam

"I have been in Jamaica with my son and I have heard children call my son a fool. They looked at him and said him 'fool-fool' and that hurts. "What I saw for myself was this: a parent was picking up a child from school, the child has the condition, the child was unruly and the parent slapped the child in the face repeatedly in front of me. It must have been a dozen times on his face. These children are suffering for the way they were born into this world." "If we can ignore the rights of these children, if we turn our backs on these children now we will suffer for this," he argued.

Co-founder Richard Phillips meeting with Minister of Education, Ronald Thwaites on behalf of the LIAM Project.

A key part of his mission he said is to have enacted in the curriculum of tertiary institutions, mandatory training for teachers to equip them with skills to work with children affected by the condition. "We are looking at, primarily, the student teachers before they graduate. What I have asked the Minister of Education (Ronald Thwaites) for is assistance in the regulatory (aspect). We are looking at a regulatory condition that says teacher should have this training before they start working," he said.

"We can have new teachers who are coming out learn the principles. If we have a thousand every year in Jamaica graduating, by the fifth year we will have 5,000 teachers in Jamaica who will at least give these children a chance," Phillips reasoned. He said it is his hope that he will be able to get a national programme off the ground by next year.  

nedburn.thaffe@gleanerjm.com

"Farewell Jamaica" raising money for the LIAM Project

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Twenty years ago, Debra Ehrhardt left Jamaica for Miami with a pocketful of dreams and a bag full of smuggled cash.  Though she is leery of putting an exact number on it—federal agencies tend to bristle at currency trafficking—Ehrhardt says the sum, in dollars, ran to seven digits. That journey, like so much of Ehrhardt’s life, often sounded like something out of a movie.

Soon, it will be.

Ehrhardt’s memorable tale of immigration and naturalization formed the basis for her one-woman show, Jamaica Farewell. Fringe Festival audiences in D.C. and New York responded warmly (our critic wrote that “Ehrhardt possesses a rare ability to mesmerize”), and a subsequent run in Los Angeles attracted the attention of producer Rita Wilson, who has optioned Ehrhardt’s story for a film treatment. Wilson attended the L.A. performance with her husband, Tom Hanks; Ehrhardt suspected she had made an impression when the couple led a standing ovation after the curtain. (If you missed the show during its ‘09 Cap Fringe run, you’ll get another shot this Sunday, when the Jamaica Cultural Alliance hosts Ehrhardt for a one-off performance at the Rockville JCC.)

Ehrhardt’s version of the fringe-darling-makes-good story is particularly satisfying to behold because of how it rides and extends the message of her show. Ehrhardt was 18 when she ran cash as a means of reaching America. “I was young and stupid because when you’re 18, you think you’re invincible,” Ehrhardt says. “I was nearly murdered and raped and I was willing to take the chance to get to America.” While Ehrhardt’s show is rich with comedy—an early moment finds her eating goat testicles with an agent from the CIA—we also get a vivid sense of the horrors from which all that humor is an escape. Her father was a “drunk and a gambler,” her hopes of being something other than a maid essentially nil. America did what it does best: it beckoned.

“You have to remember, America is Disneyland, especially if you come from a poor family in a third-world country,” Ehrhardt says. “But even when I graduated theater school in New York many years ago, they told me I would never get a job with my Jamaican accent. My agent said to me, ‘go get speech classes.’ And I don’t have dread locks, so there aren’t roles for a woman who looks like me.”

Ehrhardt laughs. “But ‘never’ is a word that Jamaicans don’t understand. If you say we’re never gonna get to do something, we’re gonna find a way to prove you wrong.”

Students of the feel-good immigration story should note that Ehrhardt found a producer to steer the project who was uniquely suited to it: Wilson’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a mini-budget smash that became the top-grossing romantic comedy ever. There is also talk of bringing on Joel Zwick, who directed Greek Wedding. The production team, in other words, should be more than qualified to deal with any and all goat-related joke material. Ehrhardt, meanwhile, gets first crack at the screenplay.

“If it’s cast well, it will be just as good or even better than the play,” she says.

CJMAS to present Farewell Jamaica to benefit the LIAM PROJECT June5, 2016 in Vancouver. Details on the CJMAS Website.