Marci Onsinyo is an eclectic multifaceted artist who loves culture, heritage and the arts. She has worked in film, and theater as producer, kiswahili coach and translator as well as costumier. She also works with visual artists,curates exhibitions, manages artists and is also a collector of art and artifacts. ‘’ I do social and cultural research. I am singer-songwriter and I’m really fascinated by sound and acoustics. I have basic training in sound engineering and audio recording and I have also recorded sound for a short film.I love nature. I love cooking. I have my music coming up soon, which I co-produced.’’
In the past few years, Marci has developed an interest in special needs children and is now using art and music for their learning in a project called, ‘Anganza Sessions.’
Angaza Sessions are designed to provide psycho social — that is psychological and social- support for parents and families of children with special needs. ‘’I chose the name because in Kiswahili Angaza means to illuminate or shine a light upon.’’
The idea came to her after noticing a few issues while working with special needs children. ’’ I had been working with special needs children for a while when I realized most of their parents have no support at all! In a typical case when a mother has a special needs child,her husband leaves her and relatives avoid her. Many mothers then withdraw from society and because of that they have no access to professional assessment or any kind of support. Because of this you find that a child is learning sign language when they should be able to speak with a little speech therapy or they end up in a wheelchair when they could have gotten physiotherapy and been able to walk.’’
Marci’s Angaza sessions are scheduled in different places and depend on, the help of her network. ‘’ I have been starting off sessions in different places to work on the model and test it. The feedback I get from parents and other participants is really helpful in improving the sessions. I depend largely on my network. If I want to start sessions, I think of a location where I have enough contacts to pull it off. When everything and everyone are confirmed, I advertise the session. I mostly rely on my contacts to invite parents they have worked with. ‘
What’s important is for parents, to be able to access professional support that they normally can’t afford or would really have to go out of their way to get.
This initiatives aims to help turn parents of special needs children from passive victims to active survivors.’’ One of the parents said the sessions give them strength. I was really glad to hear that.I find it really hard to just look on or ignore when something is not right. This is one of those. It just kept nagging me.
Most times, those of us in society who are privileged have no idea what’s going on the other side. There’s still so much stigma around special needs. At times people fear what they don’t understand. I feel if more people get to learn about special needs they’d realize we are missing out on sharing life with people who bring a whole other perspective to the way we view the world. They are just abled differently.
Last year, she produced ‘JOHN’, a short film written and directed by Aganza Kisaka. The story revolves around a single mother’s challenges in raising a child with special needs.She is also planning to release an EP to put this message out there. ‘’At the moment, I am waiting for the release of my first EP as I am involved with my passion. I deal with both the special needs children and their parents in coming up with ways to support them.’’
‘’There are a lot of plans for the future of Angaza Sessions. The dream is to make a visible impact and inspire others to be deliberate in acting towards supporting families with special needs children and hopefully be able to influence policy around special abilities.’’
Written By Consolate Namyalo