Inclusive Schooling for Children with Disabilities

Dear donors and well-wishers, Hope all of you are healthy and safe in the severe state of Kovid 19 Pandamic. We have been under the lockdown for last many days. We believe that this difficult time will soon pass and the beautiful morning will come again. The plight of the poor disabled children and their families in this lockdown situation has become very dire. But with the help of donors like you, we were able to provide relief materials and services to such a poor and needy families of children with disabilities. We would like to share with you the experience of a mother of children with disability having in this lock down situation. Razia is the mother of a 14-year-young beautiful daughter. Her daughter Zainab has intellectual impairment due to late birth crying. Razia lives in Ahmedabad with her husband and 3 other children. Razia's husband is daily wage earner, and the family lives hand to mouth condition. Zainab also has many behavioral issues. She was also often violent. She was taken to the school of Blind People’s Association for proper treatment and training. There she got a lot of improvement in her behavior by proper intervention, treatment, medicine, and training. We were very comfortable and happy with this development. The imposed lockdown has made us to remain locked in the house. She was confined in the home for very long days. Therefore, she got very irritated, and her mental condition worsened day by day. One day she was so violent that the door of the house was broken down. We were very scared to see her aggression, and violent. This kind of commotion was happening every day, even our neighbors were fed up with such incidences. We had no idea where to go in this lockdown situation. We spoke to her teacher on the phone and explained the whole incident in detail. Her teacher spoke to Zainab the next day via video call. She was very happy to see her teacher and started working as per her teacher's suggestion. Her teacher talked to a psychiatrist and arranged for her medicines for her at home. Her teacher sent her a video instructing her on what to do, and after watching the video, she began to help out at home. We are very thankful to the team of Blind People’s Association and their donors who provided us Ration Kits for two months. The following activities were undertaken in this lock down situation by the project team. Due to the serious impact of Kovid 19 Korona Pandemic, the lock Down was given by the Government of India. The situation of this lockdown became very miserable for the persons with disabilities. The following projects were started by the organization with the aim of helping persons with disabilities, their families and other sections of the society in this pandemic condition. 1. Community Mask Project: The Community Mask Project was a new initiative by the organization. The purpose of the project was to provide employment to women with disabilities and other poor women, as well as to provide free masks to the people. To date, the organization has produced and distributed over 90,000 masks. The masks were distributed to laborers, shopkeepers, police, and other members of the public. More than 20 women have found employment through this program, and the organization aims to distribute 2 lakh masks. 2. Stop Hunger: Helping Hands Project: People with disabilities have to face the most hardships in this Lock Down situation. His life depended on his daily income; the sudden closure of the business made it difficult for him to get even a one-time meal. The organization launched the Stop Hunger-Helping Hands Kit project to help persons with disabilities and their families in such dire circumstances. Under this project, ration kits are given to the family of a person with disability. This ration kit is made of wheat flour, rice, tur dal, sugar, oil, 2 masks, sanitizer, and soap. So far, the organization has distributed ration kits to more than 14000 persons with disabilities in more than 500 villages in 14 districts of Gujarat. The organization aims to provide this ration kit to more than 20000 families. For this project, the organization has received very generous cooperation from donors, local organizations, and volunteers. BPA is looking forward to receive support for this project from Corporates, Individual Donors, National and International Organization. We also plan to distribute these kits in Jodhpur District of Rajasthan. 3. Engagement and Education of Children with Disability in Lock Down Situation. In this epidemic situation, children with disabilities could not come for education, training, and rehabilitation facilities. An online training program has been launched to enable these children with disabilities to avail these facilities at home. Specialist teachers provide continuous guidance to parents and guardians of children with disabilities by planning what kind of education and training can be given to children with disabilities at home. Parents are also given online guidance on the behavioral problems of children with disabilities. More counseling services are also being offered. Based on this guidance, the parents make a video of the activity of the children with disabilities at home and send it to the teacher. Based on this guidance, parents make videos of the activities of children with disabilities at home and send them to the teacher. The video is analyzed by the teacher, then the teacher gives the parents Further Instructions and Guidance. The video collection is uploaded on BPA’s YouTube channel so that other parents, special educators and other professionals can benefit from this video. The channel details are as given below: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb5eFqcMl7UjGs23hrWEjRQ/

Links:

• The videos of Children with disabilities engaging in activity