Bethany Society aims to provide safe accommodation and opportunity for quality inclusive education to 130 children and young persons with disability belonging to marginalized and remote areas of Meghalaya, India where they are deprived of access to education or skill-training. These children come from extremely poor & deprived backgrounds. The goal thus is creating equal access to opportunities for education and employment for these 130 young people with disabilities living in Bethany Society.
About 50% of the young people with disability (5-19 yrs) in Meghalaya have either dropped out of school/educational institution or have never attended one which is significantly higher than the national average of 39% in India (As per Census 2011). In scenarios where the presence of PwDs is ensured, due to inaccessible systems and environments, their equitable participation, and performance cannot be achieved. As a result, they drop-out and their basic human right to education is not being met.
From our 25 years of experience, Bethany Society provides safe accommodation to 130 young people with disabilities from remote rural areas of Meghalaya where education is not accessible, and also an opportunity for quality education in an inclusive school where100 Children with disability study together with their 130 non-disabled peers in the same classrooms facilitated by specially trained teachers following the mainstream curriculum, thus providing them an opportunity for equal participation.
130 residential children with disabilities will avail of the hostel facilities while another 180 children from around Shillong will get an opportunity for pursuing education from pre-primary to higher secondary level, including livelihood skill-training on an annual basis. 100 teachers from government/Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and private schools will get trained in Inclusive Education annually. Project will provide an Inclusive Education model to be replicated in rural areas of the state/region.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
