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Demystifying Disability

Who we are

Inclusion for all, in all.

A pan-African coalition for inclusive education — our identity, vision, and story.

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Our identity

A pan-African coalition for belonging

The Africa Special Needs Education Network (ASNEN) brings together educators, caregivers, advocates, researchers, and community partners committed to inclusion across the lifespan. We believe African communities hold the wisdom, creativity, and resolve to build support systems that honour every person's dignity.

ASNEN develops and advances homegrown models that provide knowledge, information, capacity building, advocacy, collaboration, and practical support-so that inclusion is not an exception, but an expectation.

How we work

What ASNEN advances

We develop and advance models that move knowledge, capacity, and care into homes, classrooms, and communities.

Explore programmes

  1. Knowledge

    Share practical information families, educators, and communities can use.

  2. Capacity building

    Strengthen caregivers, teachers, and partners to support inclusion with confidence.

  3. Advocacy

    Champion dignity, belonging, and systems that leave no child behind.

  4. Collaboration

    Connect schools, health partners, NGOs, and communities across Africa.

  5. Practical support

    Deliver outreach, programmes, and tools that meet people where they are.

  6. Homegrown models

    Advance African approaches rooted in Ubuntu, reciprocity, and local wisdom.

Vision

The Africa we work toward

An Africa where inclusion is woven into the fabric of society, where every person’s potential is recognised, and no one is left behind.

ASNEN envisions an Africa in which inclusion is not an exception granted to some, but a condition of belonging shared by all. Guided by Ubuntu, we see a continent where compassion, reciprocity and dignity form the foundation of education and support, and where the shared experience and expertise of African families, educators and advocates come together in a model of inclusion that is truly our own.

Mission

Why ASNEN exists

To build a homegrown African model of inclusion, through knowledge, capacity building, advocacy and support, so that children, young people and adults with disabilities are included in education and in every stage of life.

ASNEN is a coalition of advocates, families, educators and allies committed to the full inclusion of children, young people and adults with disabilities and special needs. We create and share knowledge, build the capacity of those who teach and care, advocate for the realization of rights, and stand alongside families as they navigate the systems around them.

Core Values

Drawn from Ubuntu

Our values are drawn from Ubuntu, the understanding that our humanity is bound to one another. They are written as behaviours rather than aspirations, so that members, partners and funders may hold us to them.

  1. Utu

    Dignity first

    Utu is the Swahili expression of Ubuntu: humanness. We begin from the dignity of the child, not from the diagnosis. Disability describes a circumstance a person lives with. It never describes their worth, their capacity, or their claim on our respect.

  2. Belonging

    I am because we are

    Ubuntu holds that a person is a person through other people. We build circles rather than services, caregivers connected to caregivers, teachers to teachers, families to communities. Where a person has been isolated, our first act is to end the isolation.

  3. Harambee

    Pulling together

    Inclusion is not the specialist’s task, delegated and forgotten. It is the shared responsibility of families, schools, health workers, government and neighbours. We convene rather than compete, and we credit generously.

  4. Knowledge

    Shared, not held

    Expertise in disability has too often been guarded, held in clinics, in English, behind fees. We move knowledge in the opposite direction: outward, into homes and classrooms, in the languages people actually use. Demystification is an act of solidarity.

  5. Lived experience

    Those who carry the work shape it

    The mother who has raised a child with cerebral palsy for twelve years holds knowledge no training produces. We build leadership from lived experience, caregivers and persons with disabilities as facilitators, advocates and decision-makers, not as beneficiaries or case studies.

  6. Uwazi

    Honest accounting

    Ubuntu binds us to one another, and that binding requires truthfulness. We report accurately, claim only what we have done, correct ourselves publicly when we are wrong, and account transparently to members, partners and funders.

Philosophy

Ubuntu is why the work takes this shape

Ubuntu “I am because we are”, is not a tagline at ASNEN. It is the reason the work takes the shape it does. It is why we convene rather than compete, why we build peer circles rather than waiting lists, why caregivers become facilitators, and why we hold that inclusion belongs to everyone rather than to specialists alone. A person is a person through other people. The child who has been hidden is one of us. The mother who has carried this alone is one of us. We are because they are.

How we began

Written with the communities we serve

ASNEN emerged from a shared recognition that children and young adults with special needs-especially persons with disabilities-deserve education and community life marked by belonging, not exclusion. What began as collaborative action among educators, caregivers, and advocates has grown into a network connecting programs, outreach initiatives, webinars, and partnerships across Kenya and beyond.

Our story is still being written by the communities we serve-in classrooms, caregiver circles, medical camps, and policy forums where inclusion takes root.

The arc

Where the story turns

ASNEN did not start as an institution first. It started as people refusing to leave children behind.

  1. Beginning

    Community need

    Educators, caregivers, and advocates recognised that children and young adults with disabilities deserve belonging, not exclusion.

  2. Growth

    A living network

    Collaborative action became programmes, outreach, webinars, and partnerships across Kenya and beyond.

  3. Today

    Still being written

    Classrooms, caregiver circles, medical camps, and policy forums continue to root inclusion in everyday life.

Keep exploring

More about ASNEN

Go deeper into our purpose, history, people, and partnerships.

Leadership & governance People, accountability, and how we stay trusted Collaborators Organisations walking with ASNEN

Walk with ASNEN

Membership, volunteering, partnership, and giving all strengthen inclusive education across Africa.

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