Donia Fahim is a British speech and language therapist and educational consultant. She obtained her B.Sc., M.A and Ph.D. from the University of London. She moved to Egypt ten years ago where she worked as the Clinical Director and is founding member of The Egyptian Society for Developing Skills of Special Needs Children. She was also head of the Speech and Language Therapy Department and the Clinical Director and founder of the Early Intervention Program at the Learning Resource Centre in Cairo. She is a certified practitioner of The Listening Program and Makaton signing program.
Teaching
Dr. Fahim was trained on Verbal Behavior by James Partington and has been teaching this method to therapists and parents for more than eight years in Africa and the Middle East. She has trained over 200 ECSE teachers and therapists and is also co-author of the Arabic Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills.
Dr. Fahim teaches courses in the assessment of development and learning, curriculum models and methods and Autism in the Early Childhood Special Education program.
Research
Dr. Fahim is an active academic and was an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of London as well as a visiting lecturer on ASD at The Institute of Education, London. She has presented papers at many leading international conferences such as the UNESCO Autism conference in April 2004, the Annual Autism Conference in Egypt, the 2nd World Autism Congress and Exhibition hosted in South Africa in October 2006, the Stockholm Annual Autism Conference in August 2007 and the NATTAP conference in Ohio in September 2007, November 2008.
Her special areas of interest are the Autism Spectrum Disorders, Specific language Impairment in children speaking Arabic and English, as well as designing treatment programs and workshops for parents and professionals in developing countries. She has an ongoing mission to develop educational services, resources and awareness for children with ASD and other special needs in the Middle East and Africa; and has conducted workshops and consultations in Nigeria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
She has consulted for numerous NGOs, films and television productions in Egypt that have promoted special needs awareness across the region. She has appeared on many programs and continues to work along side regional television and media channels, such as MBC1 for which she contributed a series of episodes on early childhood development including the Green Apple program.
