This Saturday is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder awareness day. The purpose of the walk is self explanatory in the title… raise awareness. The reason being is that, there are a lot of people who are living with that disorder, and those people unfortunately aren’t able to live a normal life.

” It makes it hard to judge prices, it makes decision making a lot harder. FASD has made me different. It’s really impacted my life by making simple tasks a lot harder, and it makes me have a lot more obstacles to overcome.” -said Amanda Mollinskoena who is someone that deals with FASD

she went on to add that learning in school has always been a challenge, because teachers would always try to teach their own methods rather than asking her what works for her and what she’s comfortable with.

“In the last two years they’ve started to adapt more. They’ve been trying to teach me their way, but they’ve just recently discovered that it’s simply not working. Now they’re giving me a laptop to write with, a tablet to take photos. It helps a lot!” said Mollinskoena

Teachers and the Provincial government have only become aware of this just recently, and have made changes, but not enough…

“We need more teachers to understand FASD, because there are still so many of them that think that their own methods work, when they really don’t.” said Mollinskoena

“We are trying to get the message out to the teachers first before the students, because they need to understand that this is a developmental diagnosis. We’re not quite there yet, but we have had conversations with school boards. said Sophie Dumoulin from the Children Treatments Center

This Saturday at Gillies lake will be Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder awareness day, and there will be a walk taking place around the lake, along with free BBQ and Refreshments. This is all being done in hopes to have people who are dealing with FASD, or people that want more information about FASD to speak out,or join others to raise awareness. The walk will begin at 11:00AM.

 

Filed under: Local News