Empowerment of the Persons with Differently Abled

KSEDA provides different categories of services to differently-abled people. These are early intervention, functional academics, curriculum support for students engaged in special schools for the Blind/mainstream school, vocational training for young adults.

Major issues in all these services are lack of awareness on disability in general, and on deafblindness and multiple disabilities in particular. Mainstream schools try to avoid enrollments of these children as students; even if they are allowed to be admitted, the special needs are not taken care of. These children always remain "apart" in a system that is also their. There is no vocational training centre for deafblind and multiply disabled persons. Only one vocational training centre for women and men are at Calcutta Blind School, and at Ramkrishna Mission, Narendrapur respectively. Those who can access higher education after the school level, face challenges in accessing study materials, communicating with the teachers and/or peer group. Except for brilliant academic records, most students do not have any idea of the possibilities of realization of their limited skills for a job or self-employment.

KSEDA aims for the empowerment of the children, young adults and adults with vision impairment & blindness, deafblindness, multiple disabilities.

1. Early intervention services are provided at homes or at KSEDA Centre to children who are identified with blindness or vision impairment /deafblindness / multiple disabilities. This service is of utmost importance because the community does not understand the need, and the initial years of intervention are lost.
2. Children and young adults who cannot attend schools due to their physical /neurological conditions/cognitive impairments, are given life skill training at their home and trained for functional academics, such as counting, daily personal works, identification of currency, etc. This training leads to pre-vocation training.
3. Curriculum support is provided to students of varying degrees of vision & hearing loss, blindness, multiple disabilities through 1: 1 direct teaching with curriculum modification in collaboration with his/her school teacher, Braille transcriptions, or large prints. Some students respond well when the study materials are recorded and sent to them through WhatsApp mode.
4. KSEDA Centre is a small centre with a 600 sq. ft. area. Therefore, the vocational unit in total cannot meet. The training is imparted in groups on 2 days a week.

All these services are aimed at capacity building and empowerment of the persons with differently Abled.

Education support, training ---all services have a deep impact on the families. Parents and other siblings take an active interest in the activities KSEDA endorses. Some of the students are doing very well in their academic pursuits. In 2020, Deep Ghosh passed the Secondary examination. He is deafblind. After getting trained at KSEDA Centre, He is making phenyl at his home and selling in his village. Alice William, besides her dance training, can prepare food and indoor plants for sale. She regularly updates her creations on her youtube channel. Neelam Shaw, a multiple disabled adult helps her father run the grocery shop by packaging materials. She comes to the Centre for making costume jewellery materials.