ARVIND STORE ON WHEELS

The special needs young adults at Arvind Foundation make and sell products such as arecanut plates and cups, agarbathis, fancy jewelry, masala powders among others. We sell them at various stalls at corporate events and other public events. We also have opened a store recently to display and sell these products made by them. Now, we are trying to reach out to many more people who will be willing to buy these products. To achieve this we are looking forward to more avenues for the sale of products made by our special needs young adults and provide a livelihood to them. We therefore want to have a ‘store on wheels’ which will be stationed at various areas to sell the products created by our special needs young adults.

Our special needs young adults and children are provided with vocational training with the goal of making them independent. We have established Arvind Store in (month 2019) in K K Nagar, Chennai. We also try to reach to more people at every opportunity that presents itself. However, this is not sufficient for us to sell enough to provide the stipend that we promise our special needs young adults. We are trying to make our children as self-sufficient as possible and Arvind Store on Wheels is one of our projects towards reaching that goal. The institution provides them with the requisite skill to take on the challenges that they face with being independent. With the help of vocational skills that they are being trained in, they gain self-confidence and their self-esteem boosts up that ultimately provides them security.

The “Arvind Store on Wheels” project will benefit 35 special needs young adults and adolescents for now and will continue to benefit many more as and when our younger children grow up to be adults (we have about 120 children at our centres). Our young adults have undergone necessary training to produce the products that the store on wheels will be selling. The mobility of the store will also enable our children to meet many people and build the confidence in them to interact with others. It is a good source of engagement as repetitive work calms down hyperactive and autistic students. The outcome of the Arvind store on wheel will be a beautiful integration of self-confidence and self-esteem in our special needs young-adults that will ultimately push them to be independent. The store will also become a good source of livelihood in the future for them.