Amritians Circle of Love works for people with disabilities

We planned for doing tactile diagram for Enable India NGO between September 12th and 13th. It also got extended to 16th September. Enable India’s key focus area is mentoring and employment of people with disabilities. On September 12th, all the students were assembled in A block, 2nd floor, classroom 302 at 11 Am sharp by student coordinator Santosh. Totally we had 27 students and 2 volunteers from HP to teach how to do tactile diagram. A short description about the NGO was provided to students, and then the work began from 11.45 Am onwards. The group was divided into 3 teams and started to do the desktop screen. We had assembled 2 round tables and one team on the floor near the board. The computer desktop icons were replicated on the cardboard with icons cut in the shape of a square and with the help of Braille machine the icon display name was punched and cut accordingly. Printout of the computer icons were cut according to size and were stuck on the card board. By around evening time, Sandesh – trainer from Enable India arrived to do the quality check on the completed diagrams. He is visually impaired and knows to validate the diagrams. Totally we had 35 tactile diagrams on the first day and many to be reworked as Sandesh found many errors. The event ended at 4.30 PM on 12th. On the next day the students started with the rework and we had a different team this time, so we had to explain what needs to be reworked and then started with the new set of screen the “Start” menu. All the students on 12th and 13th were energetic and were doing it to the full speed. On 13th we had two visually impaired trainers from Enable India to do the Quality check. We started the work at 11.30 Am and completed the rework of 35 tactile and 15 start menu screens. We packed at 4.30 pm and had a group snap. We had 27 students on Saturday (12th Sept 09) and 19 students on Sunday (13th Sept 09) from Amrita Bangalore campus for the 3rd event. We received a request from enable India for Wednesday 16th September as the target wasn’t complete over the weekend. They had a dead line to handover the diagrams to their visually impaired students going out of Enable India after their training on Friday 18th September. So we arranged for a 3 hour event on 16th after the college hours. Sandesh from Enable India managed to carry all the materials from koramangala to college campus and managed the show. The event on Wednesday started at 5 PM and ended at 8 PM. Special Thanks to management for arranging and helping for this week day request. I believe Enable India had met the target of handing over the tactile diagram handouts for its closure batch students. We had 35 students on Wednesday (16th Sept 09) from Amrita Bangalore campus for the 4th event. Total count = 38 (35 students and 3 trainers cum coordinators) Special Thanks to all people who have helped to get the volunteers. You can add value to this endeavour not only by doing the diagram, but also by teaching some of the students at Enable India by reading books and teaching during weekends. Please pass this message to your friends and associates who you believe can provide valuable time based on their experience. Come…..Join……Be the change you want to see in the world. So if you feel you can make this place better places for every human/environment please write to me at subhashini_govindarajan@rediffmail.com I believe it is our collective energies that produce marvellous results.