Empower Intellectually Disabled with Technology

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AMBA - An Empowered Community
By Sugandha Sukrutaraj – Ashoka Fellow | Founder & CEO - AMBA | Author - AMBA Training Curriculum | Former Vice Chairman Special Olympics Bharat (National Board) (2000-2015)

• AMBA is an Ashoka Fellow driven, not for profit, social enterprise that enables ‘alternate learning’ leading to employment for adults with moderate to severe intellectual disability across 25 states in India.  This community cannot cope with the Open System of Learning at any level, nor can they adjust to working within mainstream companies so AMBA collaborates with Special schools and helps them evolve into Hubs for Learning and Earning.  We then bring in Back office work to these collaborations to enable employment to this community. The curriculum for this community does not teach them how to use the computer, but uses the computer as a tool, peer driven at every stage, to enable visual data entry, audit of supporting documents and back end facial annotations for an Artificial Intelligence solution.

• https://youtu.be/NOehJkj8kgQ gives you a visual of how we use Peers at the AMBA HQ, Bangalore and the Team viewer to access the peers in the AMBA Certified Partnerships across India, to start work training for them.

• We have to date shared the AMBA concept with 475 AMBA Certified Partnerships across 25 states in India and growing.  Our target is to reach 150000 youngsters within 1500 ACPCs by 2025 enabling 100% work to them by 2030.

• We need Annual Funding in continuity to enable training and employment using ICT, the computer and Peer driven processes to 4400 adults with moderate to severe intellectual disability across India every year.  The cost per beneficiary is just Rs. 27,000 all the way into work to include the laptop, training and monitoring using ICT and physically visiting and abetting progress.

• Better internet connectivity to 80% of the AMBA partnerships in small towns and villages to abet productivity. Dongles are core productive than wired connectivity in most places

• Back end jobs from the Telecommunications, Banking, Passport, Insurance sectors to the AMBA Core Center in Bangalore to route work to the AMBA Certified Partnerships across India.  Our AMBA Certified Partnerships across India could also be used as AADHAR update centres(Under Progress).  Aside from this they have started doing the back end facial annotations/ mapping to support the preventive camera based artificial intelligence solution for prevention of accidents in the Bay area in the USA. The possibility of enhancing security in Government spaces, Malls, Stadiums, Metro, Airports, etc. is worth addressing and would enable back end work for the AMBA Community in continuity.  All of this is done while meeting the security and service level agreements of the clients who give us the work.

• A leading BPO has committed in principle, work for initially 105 ACPCs in three phases.  These ACPCs are in different phases of work training presently using Peer and remote access from the ACC. The degree of difficulty can only be managed using peers.  

• We address the needs of 4400 youngsters with intellectual disability within 200 collaborations across India annually.  80% of these AMBA Certified Partnerships (ACPCs) are in small towns and villages, so our solution has to be extremely low cost for assured continuity.

• AMBA was deeply affected by Global automation. 25 ACPCs lost work.  The positive was that 4 of these ACPCs were empowered enough to find work for themselves.  Post automation, we are negotiating with the AADHAR Team for our AMBA Certified Partnerships across India to become AADHAR update centres .   We need a smart, secure Cloud Based Architecture to ensure maximum productivity.

• Would GlobalGiving Volunteers visit with the AMBA Core Centre in Bangalore to understand their capability and capacity and help us explore solutions for Back end jobs from the Telecommunications, Banking, Passport, Insurance sectors.  There are many other possibilities available within AI and who knows what other solutions will evolve with brilliant minds volunteering with AMBA! We have to foresee and ensure we don’t go through the disrupt that hit AMBA because of Global Automation in 2015-16.

• We are also looking for a partner to enable the AMBA Township in Bangalore, to include: a residential Centre of Excellence to impart and share the AMBA Training in scale; a residential BPO to cover the residential and employment requirements of 2000 adults in the first phase; a research and documentation centre; Nursing and First Aid and a retirement Home for the Parents and Care Givers of the community we serve. A residential solution in the parents’ lifetime.

• We really need support to enable scale in continuity, to enable a movement to ensure scale even beyond us:

Links:

• AMBA