A new school year is on the horizon

Hello readers,

As always, a new school year brings new changes! ABA Senegal has a history of going with the flow each September, often changing locations, adding new hires, picking up new clients, changing therapy hours, or even changing what services look like to make room for all of the academic activities. This September will be no different. So as August looms, stay tuned for new announcements. We have 30 days to prepare!

We want to extend a warm welcome to an (approximate) new hire, a Ms. Senghor, who is now serving as a jack-of-all trades here at the office: She is filling the roles of interventionist, office aide, and translator. Ms. Senghor previously worked for ABA Senegal for 1 year in 2018 as a school aide before completing her Masters degree in English here in Dakar. Now that she is finished, she has decided to come back to us and expand her role. Welcome back!

We also want to express how proud we are of one of our students who made a huge success over the last few months. ABA Senegal runs developmental evaluations every six months for all clients, and this particular student got his scores back all within normal range across all domains for the first time! This means he has made over two years of developmental progress in less than a year, across all skill domains. We are so proud of his work and his growth. We cannot of course attribute ABA therapy to 100% of his success, or even most it - We like to think of ourselves as simply boosters to the innate growth and talent that children already have. This student did all that work on his own - We simply guided him along a path that maximized learning opportunities and reinforcement for his skills.

Other important milestones reached this month by ABA Senegal students are:

- Using multi-word sentences for the first time

- Using gestures to ask for something

- Imitating a hand motor movement during a song (this last one is super important for learning hand signs later if a child is not communicating vocally)

We have one new student starting in August, so we're excited to find out what he'll be learning!

And we're off,

-Adair

Below: The near entirety of the back office. -- Binders, bubble wands, and baskets --