By Pravir Lal | Director & In-charge Resource Management
Dear Kind Hearts,
Greetings from SANKALP team!
Second quarter of the year was full of activities and new initiatives. Routine annual Psychological assessment has been completed to record the status with respect to the disability level and also to compare the same with last session to check the progress for old children and also to design the IEP (Individual Education Plan) for each child for the current session. Orthopedic & Ophthalmic checkups have also been completed. Pediatric, ENT, Dental checkup shall also be completed within next month.
Festival of Eid was celebrated in August followed by Independence Day in August. One of our leading philanthropic partners ONGC celebrated their 60th establishment day on 14th August and they invited Sankalp children to their function. Sankalp children gave two dance performances on this occasion which was very much appreciated by everyone present. Festival of Rakhi was celebrated on 29th of August on this day all the girl children tied Rakhis to the boys. Birthday of Lord Krishna followed by Ganesh Chaturthi were celebrated on 4th and 17th Sept. Special lunch was served to all children on these occasions.
Two outdoor activities were also organized during this quarter. First was the visit to the newly constructed Central Bus Depot and another a picnic at the farmhouse of one of the donors. These activities were part of Sankalp’s efforts to expose these children to the world and also sensitize the society about such children.
A new set of uniform, a school bag, water bottle and stationery has been given to all children free of cost. A new sewing machine has also been purchased for giving training to some of the children who are fit to receive it.
Sankalp has also partnered with a US Based IT company for running a 12 week pilot project beginning in the last week of October. The company has developed APPS designed by the experts of “Eden Autism Services of USA” for curriculum driven intervention for children with autism. These APPS are helpful in fixing child’s learning goals based on his assessment of current ability level and then develop his skills through audio-visual assisted devices. They shall be providing customized APPS along with devices during the pilot project. This will help in teaching autistic as well as other children who are unable to speak but will be able to respond through audio-visual stimulations. After completion of pilot project, the company shall also help in training special educators of Sankalp to learn customization these APPS as per the requirement of “individual education plan” of each child.
First of the two annual parent guidance session was organized on 2nd of August. These sessions are essential because many parents are not adequately educated or even literate and therefore, are not able to understand the behavior of their child and how to handle them. In order to provide a sustained and systematic guidance to parents, we have also appointed a professional counselor. We have also formed disability wise groups of parents for providing specific guidance for each group separately. This methodology shall focus on providing disability specific solutions and guidance to the parents and is expected to be more effective and yield better results.
Accordingly, two guidance sessions, one with parents having children with Autism and another with parents having children with Cerebral Palsy was held on 30th August and 17th October respectively. During these sessions parents were requested to fill up a specially prepared questionnaire indicating various symptoms and challenges faced by them about their child. They were also given general guidance about the disability specific challenges and their solutions. Based on the information received from parents, our experts shall now jointly prepare child specific solutions which shall be given to parents in an individual one to one guidance session in the next round.
Though the progress has been noted in all children in varying degree, a specific case of Sudhir is worth mentioning. Sudhir is Bilateral Moderate to Moderately severe (Mixed type) hearing impaired and therefore, is unable to speak. He has been provided hearing aids in both ears in March this year. Since then he is being provided auditory training and speech therapy. He has shown considerable improvements. He has now become aware of different sounds and is also able to produce various (Phonems) sounds which earlier due to his inability to hear, was unable to produce. We now expect that his speech, language and communication skill will develop faster. This will empower him not only to get integrated in to the mainstream of the society but also become a productive human being.
Remarks of the Special educators and Therapists for Sudhir in his annual report:
Academics: His score of 90.69% of target achieved in academics indicate that he has made excellent progress. He has very good potential to improve if he continues regular training.
Hearing & Speech: Considering his severe speech impairment, progress made in all areas like recognition, sound production, speaking, writing and linguistic skills is quite good. His behaviour problem is reduced & he grasps very fast.
Physio Therapy: His improvement is very good within the limits of his condition. He can get much better improvement only after the surgery.
His father has given following remarks in the feedback form:
“In this center, there has been lot of change in Sudhir. His hyper activity has decreased considerably. After getting hearing aids, improvement has been noticed. Thank you Sankalp”
Making positive improvements in the life of children at SANKALP is the motivating factor for every member of our team and results of our efforts give us confidence that we are moving in the right direction in bringing meaningful change in the lives of these children.
Until the next report a big THANK YOU for your support to our project. We assure you that YOU will be updated on what impact YOUR donation has made & what accomplishments we have achieved from time to time.
Photographs of various activities are being updated at our website www.mpctrust.org you can also follow us at Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/SankalpVadodara
Pravir Lal
Project Leader
SANKALP-In-AID-OF-DEVELOPMENTALLY-DISABLE-CHILDREN
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