In 1994, Leaena Tambyah was named Woman of the Year. The title recognised more than two decades of work for children whom, in the words of the profile written then, society preferred to forget. Her name is Latin for lioness, and at the time she spoke of the disabled children she worked with as her cubs.
She started the first school in Singapore for children with several disabilities, and she pushed for disabled children to be accepted in mainstream schools. Both efforts ran through the Asian Women’s Welfare Association (AWWA).
What did she do to earn the title?
In 1979 she organised a weekly playgroup in a church hall for a small group of children with multiple disabilities. These children were not accepted by mainstream schools or by the existing special schools. According to the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame, that playgroup grew into the AWWA school.
Before it existed, special schools catered to children with a single disability, such as blindness. A child who was, for example, both spastic and intellectually disabled had nowhere to go. By the time of the 1994 award, about 300 children had been taught at the school, which offered physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and hydrotherapy alongside classes and play for children up to 12.
What is the Teach Me programme?
Teach Me stands for Therapy and Educational Assistance for Children in Mainstream Education. She started it as a pilot in the early 1990s for bright children with physical disabilities who could cope in regular classrooms. Parents could apply for help placing a child in a childcare centre, preschool, primary or secondary school.
The support did not stop at the school gate. A mobile therapy team visited the child’s school or home to provide physiotherapy and occupational therapy. It also offered speech therapy, advised teachers on how to handle the child, gave tuition and organised activities such as kite-flying. Singapore Memory notes that the service was aimed at families who could not afford the money or the time to take children to hospital for therapy, and that it has benefited many young people, including Paralympians.
By 1994, about 200 children had been helped in ordinary schools through the programme. In the same year, the Family Resource and Training Centre gave Teach Me its Innovative Programme Award.
How did it begin?
She traced it to a visit at 16 to an orthopaedic hospital with her church youth group. She was telling stories to a small boy with polio, and when she got up to leave he held on to her and begged her to stay. She realised how much potential there was in children like him, and she has described it as a turning point.
After graduating she worked as a social worker, first full-time and then part-time, and later volunteered. She read for a social science degree at the University of Birmingham and worked at the Department of Social Welfare in 1961. From the mid-1960s she was active in voluntary work, and by 1994 she was devoting all her free time to AWWA.
What did she want to change?
Speaking in 1994, she argued that disabled children should not be segregated. Being educated alongside others would let them develop fully, and it would teach able-bodied pupils that disabled people have worth. She had written to the press a couple of years earlier asking the Government to extend the Edusave grant to special-school pupils. Parents, she said, only wanted their children accepted like any others.
She also hoped for an endowment fund that would look after disabled children if their parents became incapacitated or died. She also had a plain request for everyday behaviour: when someone is pushed in a wheelchair, speak to the person in the chair, not to the one pushing.
Singapore Memory records that she went on lobbying for children with special needs to be included in compulsory education. NCSS chief executive Ang Bee Lian, whom she mentored, described her as a pioneer who kept nudging people to speak up for the vulnerable.
What honours did she receive?
- 1984: the Public Service Medal
- 1991: a special volunteer award from the Community Chest
- 1994: the Public Service Star, alongside the Woman of the Year title
The 1994 judges contrasted her with the three earlier winners, who had been high-profile career women. She had given up full-time work early to raise her two children, and later gave her time to volunteering. One judge said that reaching beyond your own narrow interests enriches the lives of others and your own.
Asked about the title, she pointed to other women: the mothers of children with multiple disabilities, and women who endure abuse yet show resilience.
Where did her work lead?
She stayed with AWWA for decades. The Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame says she retired as the association’s senior adviser in June 2013, 13 years ago. She remains a life member of AWWA and has sat on the AWWA School Management Committee.