By Shivani Sharma | Communications & Research Manager
Unlike a lot of other impairments, brain damage is quite a sneaky thing. There are a million ways it can manifest itself, and when it is a child you are dealing with, it becomes almost impossible to determine what is happening. It's a vicious loop. It strips the child of the ability to express his/her difficulty and that leads to delayed or no help, hence worsening the situation.
But that does not mean they cannot have a normal childhood. Handled correctly, these children are very much capable of being like their neurotypical peers. Look at the two girls here. Can you tell that it has taken them months and years of intervention to develop the skill of approaching another person their age and striking a conversation, initiating a friendship? We do not bellieve in making the children do anything - we just teach them how. And when they do it on their own, like you see in this picture, it is a beautiful moment. A simple act of walking over to the swing and pushing your friend is everything we work for! Not for grades, not for normalcy, but for the child being able to live his/her own life.
We don't have fixed tenure in our program. It depends on when the child reaches the mental age of 5 years. Once that happens, the child moves to the next rung in his/her education, the Nursery grade, which is a bridge program before the kids head to functional academics. One such graduate this year is the forever camera-ready T. T came to us an extremely shy and non-verbal recluse. Over time, with relentless efforts of the interventionists and T's mother, today she is a bubbly child who loves meeting new people and more than that, loves being the center of attention! She has all kinds of poses for pictures and insists on her mother posing the same way for pictures as her! T is slotted to get her EI completion certificate on the graduation ceremony, Aarohan, on 16th June with much fanfare. T is one of the 13 children graduating this year and this is the very first time we are having an actual ceremony for it. It is a huge deal for us! Visit our FB page on 16th June, 10 am to watch the live broadcast of the event.
In the last quarter, we raised $1665 on this platform, thanks to donors like yourself. 100% of these funds are planned to go towards the compensation of the interventionists working with children like T, carrying out the organization's mission in everything they do Our team has about 18 interventionists (7 for EI) who have been working tirelessly, for years, for miniscule salaries just because they were personally invested in the growth of the children and emotionally attached to them as well as the organization. This is despite their own humble economic backgrounds and financial needs.Thanks to this donation, we were able to give them a much deserved and much overdue salary hike this April and pay them a decent amount for the extraordinary work they do. Many of them broke into tears and all of them felt recognized, rewarded and re-energized to do an even better job.
So, on behalf of the children and the parents and the staff, Thank you for your contribution. We hope you continue to support us. We have a matching grant bonus day campaign coming up on 10th July and we'd love it if you could spread the word and help us find more donors like you.
Love and Cheers
Team Tamahar
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