(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) >>I'm Darryl Owens.

Welcome to "A World of Difference, Embracing Neurodiversity".

Today, there are 193 recognized countries in the world and according to a recent review published in the Journal Science, about 10% of people worldwide live with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and autism.

Meanwhile, Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, requires countries around the world ensure that students with disabilities receive free, inclusive, and appropriate education up to college.

How that plays out in real life, however, is spotty at best.

Diagnosis, services and supports differ.

Legal guardrails ensuring inclusive education are hit or miss.

There isn't even global consensus on what constitutes learning disabilities.

Worse, in countries riddled with misconceptions and cultural shame about learning disabilities, it isn't unusual for students to be physically punished or reprimanded over their learning struggles.

In short, there is a world of difference regarding how neurodivergence is viewed and embraced around the globe.

On this episode, we meet a father and daughter in the Netherlands who both had dyslexia and discovered that succeeding at life isn't tilting at windmills.

Next, our international panel of experts will explore the global response to learning disabilities.

Later, you'll meet our latest difference maker, a public relations power broker from across the pond who considers her dyslexia a gift that allows her to bring something different and valuable to the party.

First on today's journey, we travel to Rotterdam to catch up with mixed martial arts cutman, Stefan Lems and his daughter who in their battles with dyslexia have emerged champions.

Senior correspondent Brad Kuhn brings us their story.

(bright upbeat music) >>I'm Stefan Lems.

I live in Holland in the city of Rotterdam.

I'm 45 years old and I have two daughters.

>>My name is Aleyna Kimora Lems.

I'm 19 years old.

I live in Rotterdam and I go to school to Graphic Lyceum.

>>Stefan Lems is one of the most accomplished cornermen in the world of mixed martial arts.

He also trains fighters at Ruthless Fight Company, his own gym in Rotterdam.

Aleyna, his oldest daughter, shares his love of martial arts.

They have something else in common as well.

Both have been diagnosed with dyslexia.

>>It was on the elementary school because when we have to read, I had problems.

When I have to write, I had problems too, not with talking, not with learning things.

But when I have to write or read, then I find out that I had problems.

>> I just was really slow at reading and I read words differently and I wrote them differently.

>>Lems were fortunate to be born in a time and place where neurodiversity is recognized as a learning difference, not a defect.

As a result, neither experienced the kind of trauma or self-esteem issues that are all too common among those with reading challenges.

>>It was never a big deal.

So at home, they were just really chill, let me do what I wanted to do, and just if I needed help, I could ask them, but it was not a big of a deal, but the help was there.

>>As a father and someone with dyslexia himself, to Stefan, it was a big deal, at least in terms of making sure Aleyna had all the help and support she needed.

>>She was in the third class of elementary school and I was waiting for her outside, and all the kids came out, outside of the school happy with a paper, it was their first reading diploma, and Aleyna was the only one that didn't have it.

So I see all the kids coming out of the school happy and going to their dads with their diploma, and she was the only one that's going out of the school very sad about it.

And that was for me, the breaking point that I realized, "Okay, now, we have to fight for it and we need the recognition.

>>Stefan says one of the best things his parents taught him and something that he has tried to pass along to Aleyna is self-confidence.

>>My parents support me and school supports me.

So actually, I didn't have big problems with it.

>>Aleyna is pursuing her passion for the creative arts through photography and more recently, through her studies in graphic design.

>>There is a big pressure on the kids to do high educations and I teach them to be happy and do what they want.

>>Stefan has been fighting since that day he saw the disappointment and shame in his young daughter's face to ensure Aleyna understands that learning differences are something you have, and not who you are.

>>My advice is treat them normal.

Don't make it a big issue because if you are dyslectic, you're not stupid, you know?

And especially now, we do everything on computers and we have the spelling control and everything.

So my advice is keep your kids happy.

Let them do what they want.

Don't give them too much pressure and give them, let them do the education what they want.

>>It looks like he won that fight.

>>Just ask people for help if you need it and don't make a big of a deal of it because it's nothing big, I guess, yeah.

>>For a "World of Difference", I'm Brad Kuhn.

(calm guitar music fades) (bright upbeat music) >>Thanks, Brad.

Next, our experts take a closer look at neurodivergence worldwide.

(calm bright music) Mohammad Bahareth who is dyslexic, is an author, entrepreneur, and the founder of the Dyslexia Awareness Initiative in Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Mathias Grunke is a full Professor of Special Education at the University of Cologne in Germany and a visiting Professor at the University of Sutherland in England.

He is also the immediate past President of Learning Disabilities Worldwide, the premier international professional organization dedicated to improving the educational, professional, and personal outcomes for individuals with learning disabilities and other related disorders.

Dr. George J. Hagerty is the President of Beacon College, America's first accredited baccalaureate institution dedicated to educating neurodivergent students.

Prior to Beacon, he served as the Chief of Compliance and Enforcement in the Office of Special Education Programs in the US Department of Education.

Adepeju Namme is Founder and Director of the Pitanga Resource and Special Educational Needs Learning Centre in Angola, Africa.

A British qualified teacher and SEN consultant with a Postgraduate diploma in Severe, Profound, and Complex Learning Difficulties and Disabilities.

She has over 30 years teaching in SENCO, experience in schools across the UK and Africa.

So to kick off our conversation, I wanna hear from each of you about the efforts you're doing to advance neurodiversity and we'd like to start a conversation this morning with Mohammad.

>>Hello, Darryl.

How are you?

>>I'm doing well, thank you.

>>We started the Dyslexia Awareness Initiative back in 2016.

It started with TED X seminar and when people attended, we found out that the surveys that they deliver to us, nobody knew about dyslexia from every 100 person, just one or two knew about dyslexia.

So we started the awareness program, and until today, dyslexia was just classified in Saudi Arabia for adults in 2021 in September.

And now, both children and adults can get the certification for disability, the legal papers.

Also, there is a new government entity formed a few years back and now, they're making workshops.

They have invited everybody, organizations, and societies to work together to make a better future for the people with disabilities.

>>Thank you Mohammad.

Dr. Grunke, can you tell us a little bit about the work you did with Learning Disabilities Worldwide?

>>Yeah, I certainly can.

Hi, Darryl.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we've been focusing on bridging the gap between research and practice because this is something that is really concerning to us.

Like if you had a heart problem, heart disease and you went to a hospital, you would prefer the treatment of today over the treatment you would get, you would've gotten like 20, 30, 40 years ago.

But with learning disabilities, it's different, so you don't get better treatment today than you got like a couple of decades ago.

So, and that, the reason, the main reason for this is that the gap between research and practice remains exceptionally wide.

So what we are trying to do is connect all stakeholders with each other and come up with interventions that are very easy to implement, so that we can make a difference in the lives of people affected with learning disabilities.

>>Thank you, Dr. Grunke.

Dr. Hagerty, please share with us the work you are doing with Beacon College in your work over the past few years to try to share Beacon's model with the world.

>>Well, Darryl, my history both in special ed and higher ed is fairly long.

I started as a classroom teacher in 1975 and then I went on to do a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the US Department of Education and ended up with the Office of Special Education Programs.

At that time, we were putting together the regulations, we've fine-tuning the regulations for all of the disabling conditions, but particularly for learning disabilities.

There's one thing that we did know about learning disabilities.

What was that?

It is a broad range in the diversity of the students who have the LD identification and that some students could go on and be very successful in higher education.

Fast forward 40 years, and I was privileged to become the President of Beacon College, the first institution that was devoted specifically to students with learning and attention issues.

And we have over the past eight to 10 years, made significant progress in the quality of instruction that we have.

We have a lot to teach American higher education, I believe, and I have a lot of remarkable colleagues who are passionate about our mission and our student outcomes show that we do make a significant difference.

>>Thank you, Dr. Hagerty.

And Adepeju, tell me a little bit about the work you're doing with the Pitanga Centre.

>>Well, Pitanga Centre actually started in 2012 in Angola.

I'm actually not Angolan, but I was in Angola working as a SENCO with one of the schools, and I was invited by the government of Angola to set up a 16-week workshop to train some of the directors and teachers and teaching assistants on how to actually work with children in schools, and how to differentiate their curriculum and some school programs.

So we decided I, well, I decided to set up Pitanga Centre to bring a great awareness to a lot of parents in Angola to understand that was the government was gearing towards special needs as being special educational needs.

There is a difference.

And at the time, Angola had a center for children with special needs, which covered the whole range of disabilities.

And I guess in many ways, there was no real focus on the difference.

And so, Pitanga Centre was set up to actually show that we wanted to receive children who were classified as having learning disabilities, as opposed to having a learning difficulty in order to show the difference between the two, and to bring awareness to the public on the difference between the two areas, as well as to understand that when a person or a child has what we call PMLD here in the UK, Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities, they cannot be put together with children who just have learning difficulties which gear towards a specific area.

And that was the real aim of Pitanga Centre when we did.

And today, we tried to train teachers when we are invited to different schools on ways to especially differentiate the curriculum and to train teachers on how to perhaps, maybe for want of a better word, talk with the children and to guide them along and to introduce individual education programs to those who specifically need them.

>>All right, thank you so much for that.

So I wanted to start this conversation with this a little tidbit that our viewers might be surprised to learn that the term learning disabilities isn't a universally understood and accepted term.

And so, I was gonna ask each of you to kind of define what learning disabilities means in your particular region where you live and where you work.

And we'll start this conversation again with Mohammad.

>>Okay, let me tell you about something.

It's translated in Arabic, learning disabilities, it's translated, learning difficulties.

And it's something that people take lightly and cultural understanding of the term is that this kid have a few troubles, this person have a few troubles, but they don't understand the extent of the trouble.

They don't give him the attention and empowerment they need, but legally, this term, by law, this term classifies the person as a person with disabilities.

So there is a difference between legally and culturally accepted, and known.

>>Okay Dr. Grunke.

>>All right.

We use a very broad definition, like we look at learning disabilities as a limited ability to develop the skill, will, knowledge, and self-regulation that is necessary to succeed in school.

So it's very school-related and the causes are secondary.

So it doesn't matter if it's genetic or if it comes, or the root causes are related with socioeconomic deprivation, you might have an average IQ but you don't have to do that.

So our definition includes, pretty much the definition that is used in the US as well as the definition that is used in the UK.

>>Thank you.

Dr. Hagerty.

>>Well, the term learning disabilities was first coined, it's had many other names, but in the United States, in 1962 when a researcher named Dr. Sam Kirk got together with a group of parents who were focused on LD and they came up with the name of learning disability, and it became popularized.

But in the United States, given that I was a regulator and I think this is pretty consistent.

We have a a fairly defined definition of what a learning disability is as opposed from ADHD and other learning and attention issues.

And that is students who are diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia.

>>Do you have questions about learning disabilities?

Our experts want to hear from you.

Visit our website AWODTV.ORG to ask a question.

We'll contact you to record you asking your question to air on an upcoming episode.

Our experts look forward to providing you actionable tips that make a world of difference.

(light music) >>Next, let's reveal our latest difference-maker.

Public relations has gotten a bad rap of being known as the art of spin, yet although she'd found her niche in PR and was really good at it, Nik Govier could never spin her doubts about her intellectual capabilities into a winning narrative.

She struggles to spell or write by hand and her middling school grades undercut her confidence.

But a late dyslexia diagnosis and the realization that her uber-bright daughter, also is dyslexic, has Govier putting a new spin on the attractive abilities that help her to thrive in the PR biz.

Dyslexia is her gift.

Senior correspondent Brad Kuhn brings us her story.

(bright upbeat music) >>Lazy is hardly a word one would associate with Nik Govier.

The 40-something British PR executive has won nearly every award her profession has to offer.

And yet, much of her career, indeed her entire life, has been spent trying to prove to herself and childhood critics that different does not mean dumb.

And that given the right challenge, she can work circles around most people.

>>I was classified as stupid and lazy, quite often, and that has absolutely become my driving force.

I'm dyslexic and I was diagnosed with that late-ish, still as a child, but probably around 12 or 13.

I have, I don't know if you'd call it a learning difference, but it's a form of neurodiversity.

I have a sleep condition called slow-wave parasomnia, which means the difference between being awake and asleep is so marginal that in some ways, it's amazing cause I can work 24 hours, so I can literally go to sleep with a problem and have solved, worked through it all night.

And in the morning, when I wake up, I know the answer.

But equally, it means I need a lot of sleep and I'm often really tired.

And that was diagnosed about four years ago and I suspect I've got quite a few, few other things.

But just I think, 'cause I'm 47, you know, a lot of the diagnosis or understanding of things when I was younger, when I was being tested, obviously, people didn't know kind of what they know now.

So I wouldn't be surprised if I've got ADHD as well.

(chuckles) >>Govier was fortunate in that while some people may have underestimated her, her parents never did and they had the means to provide accommodation.

>>I have been able to channel my learning differences into something that has superpowered me professionally.

But that's because I was able to be diagnosed.

I was able to have the support that I needed, but very conscious that there's so many people who perhaps, fall under the radar where schools don't pick it up or even if they do, they can't afford to do the testing.

>>Neurodiversity manifests in myriad ways, including sometimes, hidden strengths that some have called superpowers.

Govier's superpower is the ability to scan lots of data and spot trends.

That paid off most recently during the Covid 19 pandemic when she was among the first in her field to help global companies address Environmental, Social, and Governance risks, ESG in a meaningful and substantial way.

>>Blurred launched in October, 2018, so we hadn't been running that long before, you know in a year and a half or something before COVID hit.

And I mean, everybody was in shock.

The world was in shock, right?

You know, everything was turned upside down.

But I very quickly, with the support of my colleagues, spotted some trends and my company before wasn't doing ESGP, we were doing strategic communications and management consultancy, but not specifically in that space.

And noticed two things very quickly and this is what I mean, it's kind of data scanning scanning and going, "It's very interesting.

That's very interesting and that's really interesting.

And what happens if you put these things together?"

And one noticed that companies with good ESG ratings were outperforming the market during COVID because institution investors were still plowing money into those businesses because they scored well on certain factors that are now important.

So in other words, capitalism was requiring companies to behave better in those areas.

So I thought that was interesting.

And then the second thing that happened was "Black Lives Matters".

And suddenly, the S issue with ESG is Social issue was playing out daily, globally on social media as people quite rightly railed against companies who were just sharing black squares, but with no substance behind it.

You know, where they had no diversity on their boards or where they did nothing to support people of color within their organization.

So, suddenly, the light bulb went on in my brain and it was like, this is going to become everything and I'm hugely ethical as a human being anyway.

I care about these issues.

But suddenly, I was like there's a financial lever to pull here with big corporations to say, "You want more cost-effective access to capital which is the lifeguard of capitalism?

You need to improve in all of these key areas.

But of course, the brilliant thing about that would be my company would be helping huge global corporations become better corporate citizens.

So I would sleep well at night.

>>Academics would hypothesize that such superpowers may be evolution in action.

>>It was either Oxford or Cambridge University, so extremely credible.

And they had this report and hypothesis to actually claim that dyslexics and neurodiverse people are actually evolution in practice.

So actually saying, you know, standard people have failed essentially and the world is now on this point of crisis again.

So it's like we're evolving and us neurodiverse people are the new breed of people that are required to actually help create the change that's required in the future.

And my kids are neurodiverse, both of them.

They've got that from me.

And that's why I tell them, I say, you know, "You're the X-man.

You know, you're the Avengers.

You know, you are the people who think differently and act differently and therefore, can you know be the heroes of the future."

>>Govier doesn't presume to suggest that the journey will be comfortable or easy.

Part of her will always be that little girl accused of being stupid and lazy.

But if she could go back and tell her younger self one thing, it would be this, >>Just be you.

Don't try and conform to the world around you.

You've got everything you need.

You are everything you need to be and should be.

Just lean into that.

>>For "A World of Difference", I'm Brad Kuhn.

(bright upbeat music) - Thanks Brad.

And congratulations, Nik Govier, for making a difference.

And that does it for this edition of "A World of Difference, Embracing Neurodiversity."

I'm Darryl Owens, I'll see you back here next time.

You can watch episodes of "A World of Difference" on the Beacon College, Facebook and YouTube channels and on the show's website, AWODTV.org.

The website also provides tip sheets and other resources for your parenting journey.

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Thank you for watching and supporting "A World of Difference".

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