Almancil International Rotary Club (AIRC) will hold a gala dinner at the Conrad Algarve Hotel in Quinta do Lago on Saturday, April 30 which will also serve as a fundraiser for autistic children.
The Rotary Club’s president Uschi Kuhn has said her “main project as president is to raise money for the support and development of autistic children.”
“I became interested in autism when Dr Hélder Rodrigues Lopes gave a talk to our members and I then went to see the work he does at a school in Almancil (Escola E.B. 2 e 3 Dr. António de Sousa Agostinho),” she said.
Since then, Kuhn has been committed to helping children and their parents deal with the condition.
“I learned that parents’ first reaction is one of guilt that they didn’t realise the situation earlier.
“There are no medical tests for diagnosing autism. These children and their parents and families need urgent professional help and support,” Kuhn said.
This won’t be the first time the Rotary Club has supported the school and it plans on continuing to do so.
According to the UK’s National Autistic Society (NAS), autism is a “lifelong, developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people, and how they experience the world around them”.
The exact cause of autism is still being investigated, though research suggests that a “combination of factors – genetic and environmental – may account for differences in development”.
NAS says autism is “not caused by a person’s upbringing, their social circumstances and is not the fault of the individual with the condition”.
The gala dinner at Conrad will begin at 6.30pm and will feature music, dancing and a performance by the Angel’s Theatre Company besides the meal.
Cost is €75.
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