Dr. Chijioke Chris Nwokolo (PhD).
Dr. Chijioke Nwokolo has been an advocate and passionate service provider for children with autism and related disabilities since 2008. He began his career with Autism Associates, now Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (CADD) as an autism support worker and school facilitator using a combined model approach developed by Dr. Okey-Martins Nwokolo, (BCBA, USA) and Autism Spectrum Adaptive Program (ASAP), South Africa.
He has attended several trainings on autism and special education in different countries. In the summer of 2016, He travelled to USA where he completed the TEACCH autism program; classroom training (elementary through high school) held in Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina. He also had a hands-on-training in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) at prestigious Carolina Center for ABA, Cary, North Carolina, USA. In 2018, he completed the advance certificate course in TEACCH autism program conducted by Priorscourt, United Kingdom in conjunction with University of North Carolina, USA. He also did other online certificate courses like ‘Autism and Legal Issues’ in April, 2017 under Eastern Area Health Education Center (Eastern AHEC), North Carolina, USA among others.
His two years stint with little giant steps (a USA intervention program) on home-schoolling notwithstanding, he believes in inclusion education system for children with autism and related disabilities. Till date, he has successfully worked with and integrated some children into mainstream school system here in Nigeria.
Recently, he has been playing an active role in autism advocacy utilizing numerous opportunities like world autism day, radio jingles amongst others to create awareness of autism in Nigeria. In 2010, he was able to unmask an unusual ability in a ten year old child he was working with. The young boy has since proven to be an autistic savant in calendar calculating, the only child till date with such a proven talent in Nigeria.
Chijioke holds a PhD in medical/clinical biochemistry in one the prestigious universities in Nigeria. His doctoral research is the first ever biomedical research in autism in Nigeria. His quest for unraveling the autism puzzle was the motivation behind his autism research where he investigated some likely environmental triggers associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With the sponsorship of Micro Trace Mineral Laboratory, Germany, fifty (50) Nigeria Children with autism benefitted immensely in FREE heavy metals testing.
After several successful years working with CADD Nigeria, he envisioned a need for an expanded support for children with special needs to accommodate the less privileged clients whose parents could not afford the cost of intensive services. This led him to open a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) to help cater the needs of every client. This organization which started in 2017 has grown into what we now know as Elim-Bridge Autism and Neurodevelopmental Foundation (EanF). Today, EanF is proud to be the first center-based therapeutic service provider and undoubtedly the leader in autism support services in Warri, Delta region of Nigeria. EanF has invested a lot of her limited resources in training and retraining her staff to ensure highest professional standards in service delivery. Our records show that over fifty children yearly benefit from free assessment for less privileged children and highly subsidized fee for others.
