Ruadt Village Rehabilitation Therapy Centre

Rural Area Development Trust is a city wide
organization working in different areas with the
varied scope of service. The organization has been
extensively working with the grassroots
disadvantaged people under the poverty line. The
people belonging to the service area were benefitted
with various programs run by the organization like
Home based management for the multi-disabled
children, Community Based Rehabilitation Program,
Inclusive Education for differently abled children and
are being benefitted from the Residential program for
physically challenged children, Special school and
vocational training for the mentally challenged.

As our service extended, we float an
idea of Mobile Therapy Clinic (MTC).
The prime object of the MTC was to
help heal the lower income people
with their physical pains, and the
service had an enthusiastic welcome
among the target groups. As the
program was felt to be a temporary
one by the people, we came along
with a new initiative of starting a
Village Rehabilitation Therapy Center
(VRTC), which would permanently
find its service, from the block health
centers.

• VRTC Report 2 (PDF)
  

The project area is a very remote, and most of the peoples living with low income source. All the peoples were doing agriculture based activities. The peoples going daily labours working in nearby farms. The most of the forms are rain feed and working to Kerala State its border of our working area. Aged peoples were not working much more so, they were maintaining domestic animals like cow, goats and hens. Their food habits are mostly in taking of rice and other small grains.

The project Area located in south corner of the Tamil Nadu State Theni District is agriculture oriented. It is at the foot of the Western Ghats and most of the villages have no frequent transport facilities. In Theni District, the total population of persons with disabilities is 15, 605. This data was found on a survey that we did in the year 2002 with the support of other NGOs who also do the project of National Programme for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities (NPRPD).  In this data, 3,500 mentally challenged children with disability living in this dispute do not have education and other rehabilitation activities. The survey was conducted for the NPRPD programme (2002), with the aim of systematically generating reliable statistics of the actual numbers of disabled in the region, and raise awareness of available government schemes among communities. However, this programme targets school going differently-abled only, thus neglecting the needs of small children and adult.  Another programme for the differently-abled in Theni Block is the SSA (IED) Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – Inclusive Education for differently-abled Children, Department of Education, Govt. Of Tamil Nadu This programme, too, focuses on children in the age group of 5 to 14 years, employing special educators to work with the school children.

Differently-abled children in the age group of 16and above living in the area are not reached by any of the existing programmes. Moreover, government rehabilitation programme strategies and resources do not allow for immediate and sustainable. RUADT has conducted research based on case studies of differently-abled children in the 16 and above age group and their families.  As part of the research we also had discussions with the children’s parents and this revealed that they were worried and uncertain about the future of their children after their death. Their burden was because the differently-abled children who belonged to the age-group of 16 years and above did not have capacity or capability to be self-reliant. So we propose to provide a solution to provide vocational training to this age group which would help them to earn and live independently also adding to the family’s income in some way.

• VRTC Report (PPT)