By Pravir Lal | Project Leader
Dear Kind Hearts,
Greetings for the New Year 2016 from SANKALP team! Hope you must have had a wonderful New Year Celebrations!
Kids at Sankalp also had a gala time participating in many outdoor activities during October-January quarter including celebrating three festivals – Diwali on 5th Nov., Christmas & then Kite festival on 14th Jan at different locations. It was heart-warming to see them enjoying festivals and the sumptuous lunch served on the occasions. The pictures speak for themselves. Twelve children also participated in two sports events organized by other Schools/clubs. Four of them won prizes in different events.
The pilot project in partnership with the Indian Associates of a US Based IT company for providing education through use of assistive technology to the children is running very well since last three months. The company with the help of APPS designed by the experts of “Eden Autism Services of USA” for curriculum driven intervention for children with autism is engaging children in audio-visual teaching. These APPS are also 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. These APPS are helpful in teaching autistic as well as other mentally challenged/developmentally disabled children who are unable to speak but are able to respond through audio-visual stimulations. Use of technology increases child’s motivation to learn and personalizes lessons to a child’s individual needs. Even children with the most severe and profound disabilities are able to use assistive technology to learn and their potential can be reached in ways we didn’t have before.
While beginning this project we were not too sure whether the children would like the new methodology of teaching but our fears were unfounded and each one of them is taking keen interest in this learning technique. We have noticed very encouraging results in most of them. We now hope to include the use of assistive technology as a regular feature of our teaching process from next session. Initially we have introduced this method only for smaller children however, the company also has APPS suitable for older children and we plan to utilize their APP even for older children once the pilot project for smaller kids is completed.
Our special educators are also very enthusiastic about this technique and are keen to learn customization of these APPS as per the requirement of “individual education plan” of each child. They shall undergo the training for customization after completion of pilot project.
While currently we have infrastructure for only 45 children, our dream is to build a bigger centre where we can train and rehabilitate many more children who are mentally challenged or developmentally disabled.
Until the next report a big THANK YOU for your support to our project. We will be updating YOU as this project progresses & what impact YOUR donation is making in the lives of mentally challenged/developmentally disabled children at Sankalp.
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