Technology offers new and effective remedies to the real developmental and learning delays exhibited by these children who come to us unable to speak at age 3 or 4, or who cower in cubbies because of their fear of human interactions, which have proven painful for them in the dysfunctional worlds in which they live.

Our mandate is to help repair these little ones who have suffered unimaginable disregard and disrespect. Our greatest challenge is to connect with their minds at the outset as we commence the therapeutic effect of our programs. These children stay with us from ages 3 through school entrance age 6; computers play a large role in their treatment and development.

Direct interface with technology has proven significant benefit for such fearful children. Sense of trust and acceptance is difficult to achieve without the help of such enticing bridging tools. Computer tools establish new norms within safe situations.

For example, music as one medium, offers a common communication platform, a universal language that helps to overcome fears and reticence and break down the barriers to treatment, education, and therapy interventions. Computers offer multiple media experiences. Through drawing, mask making, cartooning, crafting, producing multimedia storybooks, electronic role-playing, etc. the therapist has an unlimited toolbox that exponentially expands the horizon of play and psychotherapy techniques. Our organization needs to modernize its digital tools to have the processing and multimedia capabilities required of such software.

Computers and specialized educational programs provide support for our on-site specialists (teachers, speech and occupational therapists, psychologists, etc.), who work with individual children who suffer moderate to severe speech, memory retention, and cognitive challenges. Research into best practice indicates a wide variety of beneficial and effective forms of clinical therapy can be insightfully managed for a child via comprehensive computer interventions.

Computer-based programs elicit curiosity, they allow for neutral interactions with a benign intelligence that is not threatening but encourages and supports the child’s unique needs and sense of discovery. Customized treatment programs can include computer interactions that assist speech and cognitive development ideally in compliance with a therapist’s treatment plan for that child.

When EvenStart opened its doors to children at risk in 1995, one of the main pillars (in establishing a well-developed educational service) was the discerning use and integration of technology in the educational programs and therapies we delivered. We realized one of our important goals was to familiarize these children with computers and their role in promoting inquiry and self-directed learning. As well, it was to eradicate the ‘digital divide’ syndrome experienced by children from families living below the poverty line. By exposing these children to technology, we help to place them on a more equal footing with their peers for entrance into Grade One, as per our social action mandate. Computers excel in enabling this growth. All of our interventions (whether therapeutic or educational) go towards building their confidence in their new-found skills and knowledge.

These children currently have no home-life experience with a real-world interface with technology—something that their peers take for granted. These children must develop problem solving skills, logical reasoning and critical thinking. They must gain a facility for technology that has become a basic requirement in the rest of society—their practical learning capabilities and personal progress depend on it.