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World Reach » International Partnerships » 2011: Year in Review

World Reach

2011: Year in Review

Kristina Baker

World Reach Initiative Extends Further

Heartspring’s World Reach initiative was established in 2004, and continues to grow each year. This includes our Teacher Exchange Program, as well as some other exciting possibilities that are being explored.

In November 2010, Heartspring also hosted two consultants who specialize in international marketing, as we try to expand our school opportunities to children in all parts of the world. This has helped the Heartspring School develop a strategic plan focusing on informing parents and professionals from many parts of the world about the residential and day school at Heartspring. Part of this plan meant traveling to Europe in the spring of 2011, where Heartspring representatives met with school officials, private-practice professionals and parents. In doing so, we learned that there is great interest in providing special education services to children, and Heartspring will become instrumental in helping these schools develop these new programs to do just that.

India

In September 2010, Pankaj Tiwari, a teacher from Heartspring’s sister school, Action for Autism and the Open Door School in New Delhi, India, joined us for two weeks. Approximately two months after receiving this extensive and in-depth training on the Heartspring campus, he sent an email stating, “[Everything] I learned from Heartspring, we try to implement and it’s really helping a lot.”

Action for Autism Founder Merry Barua said, “Thank you so much for having Pankaj over. The experience at Heartspring has had a tremendous effect on him. He is more charged up than he used to be. And happy and excited about all he has learned. [We’re] trying to implement them in the classes here. Thank you for making this possible for our teachers.”

Chile and Uganda

In November 2010, Heartspring hosted the first two applicants, a director from the Montessori Integrated School in Kampala, Uganda and a therapist/director from Centro El Aromo, now TeGereD, in Santiago, Chile, for the newly biannual Teacher Exchange Program. Based on the incredible amount of interest in this program, we decided to offer it each May and November. In the past, this was only open to professionals working at one of our two sister schools, but now we have an open application process where up to four participants are selected, allowing them to receive three weeks of training on our campus and extending Heartspring’s reach into new parts of the world. 

To learn more, visit http://www.heartspring.org/teacher-exchange/testimonials.

China

Heartspring was invited back to China in October 2010 for two weeks in order to conduct workshops in two other provinces and provide more intensive training to the staff at Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism in Beijing. This year’s professionals included Heartspring President and CEO Gary Singleton, Pam Calabria, behavior specialist, and Kara Gibson, occupational therapist.

In June 2011, training continued on our campus and included 15 delegates from 12 different school programs in various regions. Almost all of these delegates have a child with autism and a trip to the United States was a first for many. It took a tremendous amount of community support to make this trip such a success, we are truly grateful to the WMF for their support. The Wichita Chinese Association embraced our guests and made them feel at home, inviting them to church, dinners, karaoke contests and more. But of course, it was the united spirit of learning and dream to make a child’s life better, that truly brought everyone together and made a lifelong impact on Heartspring’s worldwide reach to make a difference, one child, one community, one country, at a time. To learn more, please visit http://www.heartspring.org/news/2011/07/01/a-community-embraces-a-country.