Sisters take autism awareness to China

From The Quincy, Mass., Patriot Ledger:

RANDOLPH, Mass. — On their first trips to China in 1992, Helen and Karen McCabe met Zhang Ge, an 8-year-old girl with autism.

Helen McCabe, an assistant professor of education at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state, would frequently travel to China to do research, her sister Karen said.

“Over the years, she kept meeting more kids with autism, and she realized they didn’t have any services for kids with autism or any disabilities,” Karen McCabe said.

After years of talking about it, the sisters formed The Five Project 18 months ago. The purpose of the charity is to bring information about autism to families and educators in China as well as to help develop services for people with autism and other disabilities there.

Karen McCabe said that, unlike the United States, there are few special education programs in China’s public schools. There are some private programs, which charge tuition.

“A lot of them are doing the best they can with what they have, which isn’t a lot,” Karen McCabe said.

Since both sisters speak Chinese, “we have an ability to help people that we wouldn’t have in other countries,” said Karen McCabe, who also works for the Randolph Community Partnership.

Based for now at Karen McCabe’s Fitch Terrace home, the charity has translated some materials on autism, a developmental disability that impairs social interaction and communication, and distributed them in China.

They’ve held workshops for parents and caregivers as well as teachers in Beijing and Nanjing, and have also formed a support groups for families of people with autism and another for young adults with mental illness and their families.

Karen McCabe said they hope to raise enough money eventually to take other American experts in special education to China and allow Chinese educators to receive training in the United States.

“It’s one thing for us to explain it,” Karen McCabe said. “It’s another thing for them to come over here and see it.”

The Five Project gets its name from Zhang Ge’s love of the number. Now 24, she works shelving books in the the library of a community center in Nanjing.