Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais-APAE

About Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais-APAE

The National Federation of Apaes, or Apae Brasil, is the largest support network for People with Intellectual Disabilities or Multiple Disabilities. According to the IBGE 2010 Census, Brazil has 45,606,048 people with disabilities, equivalent to 23.9% of the country's population. 18.60% were declared people with visual impairments, 7% with motor impairments, 5.10% with hearing impairments, and 1.40% with mental impairments. The Apae movement arose from the need to cover the state's inefficiency in providing due assistance to people with Intellectual Disabilities or Multiple Disabilities. In a country historically marked by strong rejection, discrimination, and prejudice, the families of these people, committed to seeking alternative solutions so that their children can achieve conditions to be included in society, with guaranteed rights like any other citizen, created the first associations. These associations were born with the mission to educate, provide healthcare, and fight for their rights from the perspective of social inclusion. This mobilization had to count on the support of several professionals who, believing in the struggle of these families, undertook studies and research, sought information from similar entities abroad, exchanging experiences with people from other nationalities who also suffered from neglect and few public policies that would benefit their beneficiaries. It was then that in Brazil this social mobilization began to provide services in education, health, and social assistance to those in need, in places that were called Associations of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional (Apae), constituting a network for the promotion and defense of the rights of people with intellectual and multiple disabilities, with 24,711,380 services provided in 2019, in the areas of prevention and health, education, social assistance, and job market inclusion. Today, the Apae network has more than 1,300,000 beneficiaries, organized in more than 2,200 units present throughout the national territory. All this mobilization around people with disabilities, driven by the Declaration of Human Rights, culminated in the creation of Apaes, which, with the expansion of this initiative throughout Brazil, came to be treated as the "Apae Movement".