By Elizabeth Sholtys | Director
Ranjana Prajapati joined AIC shortly after the start of the AIC Education Outreach Program. She has an older brother (Devendra) and two younger sisters (Deepali and Jeshoda), and at the time of her admission to the program, her mother explained through tears that Ranjana and Devendra were "not like other children" and couldn't understand anything at school.
Subsequent testing at a local child development centre revealed that Ranjana and Devendra have IQs in the low 40s. Despite these test results and the obvious difficulties Ranjana and Devendra were having in school, their parents refused to let AIC staff look into alternative school arrangements for them where their needs could be more holistically and meaningfully met because they feared being ostracized within the community and worried about what being officially labeled "mentally handicapped" would mean for their children's futures.
Thus, for years, Ranjana and Devendra were shuffled through the mainstream Indian government school system, held back in the same class year after year, because their intellectual handicaps made it impossible for them to keep up with their classmates. After the Right To Education (RTE) Act was implemented in 2009, including the mandate that no student be held back or expelled until the completion of elementary education, the schools had no choice but to promote them, yet as their peers learned to write compositions and add fractions, Ranjana and Devendra struggled to write letters and numbers and were generally ignored by indifferent government school teachers. Although they loved attending tutoring classes at AIC, had excellent attendance, and participated enthusiastically in activities and extracurricular opportunities, it was clear that they were falling through the cracks in a ‘mainstream’ school. By 2013, Ranjana was 14 and Devendra was 18; both were still in primary school.
Finally, in June 2013, AIC staff was able to enroll both teenagers in Kamyani School for the Mentally Handicapped with the consent of their parents. From that point onward, their progress and personal development truly started to take off. Both won awards, received certificates, were even highlighted occasionally for achievements in the newspaper, and were generally appreciated for their strengths and growth instead of being relegated to the back of a classroom and ignored by indifferent government school teachers. Ranjana loves bringing her certificates and medals to show her teachers at AIC, and has grown so much in terms of her self-confidence over the past few years.
At Kamyani School, she found her niche in sports, and was quickly identified as a star hockey player, despite having no previous background in this sport. This past year, Ranjana competed at the local level, followed by the state level, and finally at the national level, for a spot on the Indian women's floor hockey team. Incredibly, she beat out other competitors from around the country and was selected to play on the team at the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria last month!
About her selection, Ranjana had this to say: "I worked very hard to get selected in this international competition. My father and mother have a huge role to play in my success to date. In this competition in Austria, India will win the gold medal and the Indian flag will fly high in this foreign land."
We're proud to say that Ranjana and her teammates brought home the bronze medal for floor hockey! All in all, India's 90 athletes brought an impressive 73 medals home from the World Winter Games.
In addition to sightseeing, learning about a new culture, and interacting with athletes from all over the globe, Ranjana even had time to see AIC Director Judith, who was thrilled to be able to visit with Ranjana, whom she has known for quite some time.
The underlying lesson here is that when a child's talents and interests are nurtured meaningfully and her full potential is unleashed, the sky is truly the limit in terms of her achievement. We are very happy to have played even a small role in facilitating this opportunity for Ranjana, and even more excited to know that she's received the recognition and support she has deserved all along. Congratulations, Ranjana!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
