Speak Up!

Eradicating barriers to accessing therapeutic and social services for children with speech, language and communication disorders in marginalized Ugandan communities.

In Uganda, approximately three million children are living with a form of disability- many of whom have diverse communication, language and behavioral challenges. Children with disabilities are among the most marginalized and ostracized people in society. They are extremely vulnerable to abuse, discrimination, neglect, being hidden away and even killed due to social stigma and negative cultural believes. With less than 30 practicing speech and language therapists in a nation of 40 million people, the majority of people with disabilities never receive the interventions to develop the necessary communication skills to live to their full potential. Available speech therapy services are further often costly and out of financial reach for parents of marginalized communities. 

Determined to challenge these obstacles, Hope Speaks developed a One for Two model to ensure vulnerable low-income communities have sustainable and affordable access therapeutic and social services.  Building on complementary services Hope Speaks enables children, parents and communities to unlock their potential, to fight stigma and discrimination and to amplify their voices on social, economic and political participation. By coupling therapy provision with education, community outreach, advocacy and capacity building of speech therapists, Hope Speaks aims to break down barriers in regard to service and educational accessibility while initiating sensible policy discussions in Uganda and East Africa.

Our One for Two model, provides free services in unreached low-resource communities through our free community clinics by leveraging funds from paying therapy clients from higher income communities in Uganda.  While this is a proven business model used for social enterprises and within the private sector, Hope Speaks aims to transfer existing solutions to new markets with a focus on provision of therapy and social services to children living with diverse communicative, physical and behavioral needs. 

Speak-Up builds on a financially sustainable business model, leveraging funds from private clients, to our free-community clinics serving low resource families, otherwise unable to afford speech therapeutic services. Combined with social services, community education, capacity building of frontline health workers, speech pathologists and parents, "Speak-Up" will enable parents, communities and practitioners to make informed decisions, lead children to live to their full potential and create lasting impact on better inclusion for children with disabilities.

Hope Speaks has implemented a technology that lends itself to online case documentation for all of our clients and continuing education for all our staff and frontline Health care workers. Furthermore, Hope Speaks is in the process of conceptualizing a mobile information platform, geared towards practitioners, health workers and speech pathologists, providing resources and information on speech, language and communication disorders. 

Over the upcoming 12-months we aim to expand our services into additional identified communities, conduct research to better respond to challenges of our target group, and develop a training program to build capacity of Ugandan speech and language therapists, and utilize the skills and knowledge of international speech and language professionals to build capacity through professional development. In addition, we aim to create a mobile resource information platform, to enable speech pathologists, healthcare workers and practitioners to expand their knowledge about speech disabilities and provide for a continuous learning opportunity.

Over the coming years, Hope Speaks aims to expand their outreach into additional communities across Uganda, and incorporating more programming areas, such as women empowerment and vocational training, carry out regional collaboration within East Africa and expand our One for Two Model, to reach more beneficiaries.

Hope Speaks, collaborates closely with school, government institutions and local leadership, civil society and health care providers, which allowed us to build a wide referral mechanism across several communities in Kampala and Wakiso district. Hope Speaks conducts regular assessments in communities and holds regular stakeholder and outreach engagement to reach wider target populations. Communit

Hope Speaks is currently running a private speech therapy clinic, two free community-based clinic in low resource neighborhoods of Kampala and we are partnering with six schools across the city for assessments and therapy. We further work in close collaboration with local authorities. Over the past 18 months we were able to assess over 400 children, and carried out extensive community sensitization in slum areas, home to over 400.000 people, and built new partnerships. Families/communities benefited from increased understanding about speech disorders, parents were able to make more informed decisions and children were able to discover their full potential.

In the next 12 months, we aim to expand to additional communities across Kampala, and Wakiso district, before moving on to additional districts across the country and to neighboring countries in East Africa. Our combination of community clinics, and outreach/education will allow us to reach at least additional 800 children over the upcoming 12 months, and we are planning to reach over 3000 within the next three years.

Hope Speaks brings together Ugandan and international speech pathologists, special needs teachers, nutritionists, social-workers and development practitioners. With over 20 years of combined experience, Hope Speaks provides the necessary skills to advance our mission of affordable access to speech therapy. 

In 2018, Hope Speaks opened the first of its kind speech therapy facility in Uganda, to address challenges of both children and adults with a wide variety of needs and disabilities ranging from articulation and stuttering, to severe cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome, and traumatic brain injuries.

Our One for Two Model, provides free services to lower income communities by leveraging funds from paying therapy clients from higher income communities, in our free community clinics in Katanga and Kasokoso slum areas. While this is an existing model used for social enterprises and within the private sector, Hope Speaks aims to expand this and replicate it across Uganda, with a focus on provision of therapy and social services to children living with diverse communicative, physical and behavioural needs. 

A collaboration with MIT under the SOLVE challenge, would enable Hope Speaks to create new partnerships, in the fields of health, IT and community development. As a rapidly growing organization we will benefit from peer-exchange and mentoring, as well as developing new partnerships and reaching wider stakeholders across the globe to enable us to amplify our impact and to develop more innovative solutions to tackle existing barriers in accessing speech therapy and related social services. 

Hope Speaks work is impacted by several multi-faceted challenges, ranging from lack of awareness among families and parents to negative cultural beliefs and stereotypes about children with disabilities and subsequent community push-back to interventions, further speech therapists often graduate with limited practical experience and frontline health-care workers have little to no experience in working with and assessing speech, communication and language disorders. 

Hope Speaks recognizes the need for internal capacity building in line with our programmatic scale-up, technical capacity building on developing a mobile information platform and additional cross-sector exchange to expand our work and maximize our impact.