Pathways Autism Trust is a non-profit organisation established to cater for children on the Autism Spectrum of disorders, initially in Zimbabwe and ultimately in other Southern African Developing countries that have either limited or no facilities at all to treat, rehabilitate and educate children with autism. The objective of Pathways Autism Trust is to establish a network of multi-purpose educational and therapeutic Centres for individuals – particularly children, on the Autism Spectrum. Pathways Autism Centre will initially cater for children in the age range 3-16 years (nursery to primary school age) and as the Centre expands in the future it is intended to provide for individuals beyond this age range who have yet to be rehabilitated from autism or otherwise absorbed into the mainstream education system or work. Autism is a developmental disorder that appears in the first 3 years of life, and affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills. The exact causes of these abnormalities remain unknown. The condition is usually manifest through three distinct areas of characteristics of behaviour:
(1) Inability or limited ability to communicate verbally (i.e. a complete lack of speech or unusual and limited capability to communicate verbally)
(2) Lack of social orientation (lack of eye contact, inability to interpret facial expressions; treating adults as "objects"; lack of normal interaction with others) - typically the child may appear locked in their "own world"
(3) Repetitive or obsessive behaviour (often the child shows an intensive and narrow focus on one or two special interests or activities e.g. fascination with machines, hard objects, things actions ("stims" or "isms") such as repetitively rocking from side to side, hand flapping, spinning, hitting self or headbanging, are also common behaviours. Other wellknown developmental disorders in the autism spectrum include:
• Asperger syndrome (like autism, but with normal language development)
• Rett syndrome (very different from autism, and almost always occurs in females)
• Childhood disintegrative disorder (rare condition where a child learns skills, then loses them by age 10)
• Pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), also called atypical autism.
