Inclusive Schooling for Children with Disabilities

Dear Donors and Well Wishers,

Greetings from BPA!!

I hope this email finds you in Great Spirit and Health. We are very grateful to you for your support and encouragement to continue this project in such a difficult time. The second wave of Covid 19 was very stressful and difficult for us. Many staff members were affected and hospitalized. We are very sorry to inform you that we have lost our two staff members in the second wave of Covid19. 

We have continued in providing our services to children with disabilities and other students without disabilities. The following activities have been undertaken. 

Pandemic Management &Value Addition: 

As the children and the caregiver and academic staff stay on the campus the first priority of the BPA has been to provide a safe and sanitized environment to the residents.  Luckily, due to our stringent measures, none of the disabled children have fallen victim to covid.  The children and staff all wear masks, keep social distancing and maintain hand sanitization and other cleanliness measures.  

As the staff members were relatively free, they cleaned up the campus.  There were also training programs arranged for staff in the areas of sign language and computer literacy.

Formal Education to children with disabilities and without disabilities:  

The Government of Gujarat through a Circular has closed the face-to-face education of children of primary schools. Hence we have also stopped children without disabilities from coming to the school. However, we have not stopped education. We are providing online education through smartphones to all the children in their own homes. We have provided smartphones to children for this purpose. Every day, the lessons are taught to the children through online classes by the teachers. The entire syllabus has been sent in an easily accessible format by the teachers. The question papers given by the government were hand-delivered to every child and the answer sheet was collected in person. A Whatsapp group has been created by the teachers and BPA administration for monitoring the quality of education.

The teachers made use of the time to develop very useful, practical, and innovative teaching-learning material for the children. An exhibition was held at the BPA main campus in Vastrapur to showcase these excellent creations.

Medical and Psychiatric Services to children with Disabilities:

All the children are being provided the medicines for their epilepsy or other health conditions on a daily basis. As informed earlier, the doctor visits the center every day. The BPA Porecha Eye & General Hospital is situated only 5 km away. The hospital staff visits the center once a week and checks the eyes and other health of the children. In cases of emergency, the team comes in on the call. The health forms of every child and medicine are clearly mentioned in a chart. The children are given training in eating, toileting, washing, and daily living activities by the caregivers and special educators. Birthdays of all children are celebrated. This year due to the current situation, birthday celebrations are in very small groups and with social distance.

We hope and pray that the covid 19 pandemics would end soon, and our little kids would come to the school and make the school premises live and joyful. 

Thanking you once again

With Best Regards