Support Early Intervention Unit for Children with Special Needs - The Malsawm Initiative

Our issue is not being able to provide physical space for all the Children with disabilities between 0-8 years. The school is not even adequate to cater to the needs of the current set of beneficiaries, and therefore it is impossible to admit new beneficiaries. We have been interchangeably using different rooms for class, therapy, vocational training, earl intervention due to constraints and small sizes of the rooms. Lack of access to opportunities, including educational opportunities, play a vital role in limiting the development of children with seeing disability and eventually act as a major barrier to their participation in socio- economic process.

However, given the ever increasing number of children each year and considering the fact that the present school lacks space to accommodate them, Centre for Community Initiative (CCI) is unable to take all the children under the school. And, as we are a grassroot organization supported with empathy by tribal community in the area, we are unable to solve the problem by ourselves as people occupation mainly here are farming with little income. So, we are in need of assistance to construct a permanent and spacious unit for Early Intervention of students.

Children with disabilities between 0-8 years are provided appropriate services according to their needs in the Early Intervention Unit. Graduated students from this Unit joined regular classes at TMI. So, it is very important for children with disabilities start their school by going through Early Intervention class first. When the construction for the unit is done, the room will be equipped with all the necessary infrastructures required for the class. Also, awareness program will be facilitated among the community, parents and the children about the importance and necessity of Early Intervention in the school.

We wish to enhance holistic development opportunities for children so that in the future, the graduated students from this Unit can join regular classes at TMI. In this way, they will not miss out anything and have access to quality education which will enable them to enhance their potential for effective participation in the socio-economic process. On completion, we wish to take in all the kids who see an increase in the intake of Early Intervention students with a scope of 100 per annum. Not only that, we want to provide guidance and counselling to differently abled individuals. We really hope that more people will become aware about not only the school but also about the Early Intervention Unit.

Early Intervention of the children is important not only to facilitate their all-round development and help them to lead a dignified and independent life, but also to rid their parents of the psychological burden of having a child with special needs.