KARACHI: A state-run Turkish aid agency has launched cricket and football training facilities for children with special needs in Karachi.
The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) set up cricket training pitches and football stadium especially designed for hearing and visually impaired children at Ida Rieu School for Blind and Deaf, Karachi.
The school is one of the largest educational facilities for special children in Pakistan with an enrollment of over 800 students.
TIKA has also upgraded digital technology for better study opportunities at the 100-year-old school located in the heart of Karachi.
Addressing the inauguration ceremony, President Arif Alvi thanked Ankara for setting up the sports facilities for children with special needs, who are “inseparable” part of any society.
Calling for incorporating the special people into the society, Alvi said: “We must help them to feel normal because they are as normal as everyone of us.”
He further thanked Ankara for lending its support to Islamabad in every trying time.
Highlighting the importance of sports among youth, the Turkish Consul General in Karachi, Tolga Ucak, hoped that the sports facilities set up by TIKA will support the talent and pave the passage for mainstream sports for children with special needs.
The decades-long friendship between Pakistan and Turkey, he noted, has gained more strength with every passing day.
TIKA’s Karachi Coordinator Ibrahim Katirci said the aid agency has established a number of projects for Pakistani youth in recent years, ranging from libraries to vocational training centres and to music classrooms.
TIKA has already actualised a number of educational and sports projects across Pakistan, mainly the less-developed areas of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces.
