Introduction

Eden Centre for Disabled Children (ECDC) {formerly ‘Eden Handicap Service Centre (EHSC)’, Yangon} is the first non-government, non-profit charity organization for physically and intellectually disabled children irrespective of race, religion and nationality. It was established by dedicated people in April 2000 at Yangon, Myanmar to meet the urgent and great needs in this specific field.

Background

Although there are still no authentic statistics on the extent of the disabled population in Myanmar it is generally conceded that about 10% of the population is affected in one way or the other. Among many types of disability physically disabled people constitute about 2% of the population in Myanmar. According to this bench figure it is estimated that there are more than one million physically disabled people in Myanmar today.

Many of these people do not received proper service provisions in every sphere of their life. There is only one special school for physically and mentally disabled children, ‘School for Disabled Children (SDC)’, under Department of Social Welfare until today and our ‘Eden Centre’ is the first private centre in this specific field in the country.

As a pioneer centre it is always trying to provide not only service but also disseminating disabled related knowledge and other essentials skills according to ‘Social Model of Disability’. We hope that In future the centre will be the main resource centre for disabled people in the country.