Adarsh Charitable Trust

Adarsh Charitable Trust works with the vision of becoming a rehabilitation centre that provides a social and physical support infrastructure to empowe Read morer the disabled child, by providing them with medical and therapeutic assistance, academic training and appropriate vocational skills to enable them to lead an independent life. Some of the other programmes of Adarsh include rehabilitation for cerebral palsy, autism and down syndrome, remedial teaching for children with learning disorders, early identification and intervention, early visual & sensory stimulation and mobility training to develop the child's motor areas, play school readiness programmes, home based training for those who cannot attend a special school, awareness campaigns and family counselling. Adarsh trains children at the centre under the National Open School system, from classes 2nd standard up to 12th standard, with their daily activities involving academic learning, playing, group sessions and extracurricular activities like craft, music etc. that closely resemble a mainstream school. Apart from that, it also provides music therapy, hydrotherapy and computer/ vocational skill training. Since the majority of children that get trained in Adarsh are from the economically weaker sections of society, Adarsh helps bridge the gap by sponsoring children through grants in aid and reimbursement from the local self-government bodies of Kerala and other private donations. Adarsh has motivated others interested in the problems of differently-abled children by helping 13 community rehabilitation schools come up at different places in Kerala, together training over 300 children.

VISION
To become an institution par excellence, providing comprehensive habilitation measures and pioneering efforts for enriching the lives of challenged individuals.

MISSION
To help every challenged child by

• Reaching medical and therapeutic assistance
• Imparting academic training appropriate to specific needs
• Equipping with appropriate Vocational skills
• Creating necessary social and physical support infrastructure that empowers the child to lead a life of independence and dignity in adulthood.

Starting a new centre, Adarsh Centre for Epowermenbt for children above the age of 18 years. Adarsh Charitable Trust was established in 1998 with an objective to rehabilitate persons with physical and mental challenges. Based on this objective, ACT runs both centre based as well as community based rehabilitation activities. At the main centre, since its inception ACT has been focusing on children with Cerebral Palsy till April 2003 when a new section for Autism was added. Later sections for Down syndrome and Learning Disorders also were included. Initially the main focus of ACT was on Early Intervention programme. This focus on early intervention still continues.

In December 2005, when ACT was shifted to its new own disabled friendly building at Kureekkad, there were hardly 10 children above the age of 18 years. But gradually the number of children in this age group has started increasing. Today ACT has 150 children above 18 years. One of the main reasons for this is that for children with moderate to severe category of disability, the outcome of all the rehabilitation endeavours is negligible and limited. They have no other choice than to continue in ACT as long as their health permits to travel to and from ACT. Hence the need of proper vocational rehabilitation program and a day care facility was strongly felt. ACT started the vocational training programme in a very mild form in 2008. It did not produce good results due to various technical issues. On analysis it was found that vocational skills vary from child to child and there was a need of a proper assessment and evaluation before imparting a training programme for the children. Later in 2016, ACT established an effective vocational training unit with qualified and experienced staff members, and it is still going on well and smoothly, but the facilities and scope are limited.

Adarsh then conceptualised its exclusive Vocational Training Centre named as Adarsh Centre for Empowerment (ACE). Adarsh wanted to set up ACE close to Adarsh’s main centre at Kureekkad. ACT was looking for a suitable land to buy or build or lease a building (on long term lease) since FY 16/17. Suitable building on long term lease was not just available and land was very costly.

While Adarsh was struggling to find a way forward for ACE, we received two new commitments for ACE. The first support came from Rotary Cochin Central who agreed to fund equipment for Rs 50 lacs(approx.) for ACE. This support came to us March 2019. Around the same time, Shri Mathews P Mani, father of a student of ACT, donated the 2nd and 3rd floor of a 4 storeyed building, each floor with 4000 sq. ft. area, on a lease agreement for 30 years for ACE at a nominal rent of Rs 1 per month. This building is just 2.5 kms away for Adarsh main centre. ACE will have Vocational Rehabilitation Programs, Therapy Facility and Day Care facility for children above 18. In addition to this building around 30 cents of vacant land with a full-fledged swimming pool is available for the rehabilitation of the children. Lease Agreement for the building (8000 sq ft) was signed in February 2021. Another building of around 1700 sq. ft. for housing the Chappati Making Unit and the Bread and Cake unit was built near to the main building