North East SEND children to speak to the International Space Station
A charity is looking for a venue to host it though
Children with special educational needs and disabilities in the Tees Valley and County Durham are set to speak to astronauts later this year.
A charity is giving them the opportunity to link up with the International Space Station in May, but they say they are in dire need of a venue to host it.
Ella Bains, founder of Eric Knows in the North East, said: "It's been quite a whirlwind and for us it's really special because we work across a number of different schools. Ordinarily it might be one school that gets the go-ahead to speak to the ISS and that's obviously a huge deal but for us, we work with several different schools so it's really quite exciting.
"It's quite a timescale that we have. The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes which is phenomenal when you think about it, so the space where we've actually got that opportunity to speak to them when they're overhead and they can tune into our comms on Earth, is a maximum of window of 10 minutes so we don't have long.
"After watching a lot of events where this has been done before with specific schools, their favourite question tends to be around using the toilet but the kids are thrilled. We haven't reached out to everyone that's going to be there on the day so a lot of that excitement is still to come.
"I work with a lot of children with SEND who are very passionate about STEM activities, and they can't access them readily or easily because the provision tends to be for quite a mainstream set up. I run STEM activities now and there's sheer delight in the students of being somewhere where they can feel like they can be themselves.
"SEND children have a natural affinity to STEM and I think for that reason it's really important that we tap into what these kids strengths are, and celebrate what people can do when the environment is right around them, that's everything that our charity is focussed on, so outside of this day that we're going to hold, that's everything that we stand for as well."
The free to attend event will be held on Saturday 11th May but they desperately need a venue to host it. They are looking for somewhere big to hold STEM activities and a couple of career stands as well as very good internet and signal.
Anyone who can help can contact Ella at ella@ericknows.co.uk