
Word From The Director
Our children grow up learning a lot of things without our intervention, and we still believe that their upbringing is a hard and tiring task. Little do we know that some children can’t perform any of the small daily acts we do unconsciously, no matter how simple they might be. If we don’t believe in them and stand by them, they will lose the only opportunity they have to learn these gestures. That’s why we speak of “Early Intervention”, the core mission of the Early Childhood Intervention Lebanon (ECIL).
A child with special needs might be different from other children in the way he needs to be handled, or in his growth and development pace. But nonetheless, he remains a unique person with a distinctive personality and character. And like any other child, he needs to be happy, loved and cared for. Most importantly, he needs to feel that his parents have not lost hope in his bright future.
ECIL Center
At ECIL, our role is to pave the way for families with a special-need child, to enable them to take care of their children in the best possible way, for we are firm believers in the Imam Sadr teachings, especially when he speaks of Man: “Planning and organization is the pillar to any worldly success. God created the universe with such an attention to details that random acts cannot make the rule.” (Imam Sadr – 22 May 1969).
Building on this principle, ECIL strives to help special-need children and their parents by giving them access to a multi-disciplinary team of administrative staff and therapists, in an attempt to cover all the dimensions of every phase in the intervention process. Our ultimate aim is to enable the child to grow up into an independent adult, by giving him the opportunity to enroll in a school or a specialized institution.
The success and continuity of this kind of services surely depend on many factors including the work of the association, the mutual collaboration and coordination between the different governmental parties, non-governmental organizations (local or international) and the civil society, as well as on the awareness of parents in regards to their prime role in the intervention process.