Ready for another challenging opportunity in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh for the school for children with disabilities.

It's a school for children with disabilities, Anand Niketan Deaf School, and the only school that has a hostel for girls with disabilities in the whole region. It’s a semi government school and is partially funded by state social welfare department. It’s a residential school and most of the students belong to poor families. It provides education, speech therapy and training for income generation skills to deaf children, both girls and boys. The school has been in existence for 25 years and they need support in making sure that the  children acquire useful ICT skills. The children at this school, both boys and girls are primarily deaf and dumb and do speech therapy and  learn how to sign. They also do some skills-building like candle-making, weaving table cloths and creating stuffed toys.

 Anand Niketan Deaf School, badly need volunteers from cities who could go there and help in preparing complete blue print for the project. That may include

1. The use of Computer and Internet for deaf children including the identified uses

2. How to arrange for computers and software

3. How to arrange for the training of the school teachers

4. How to arrange the funds for all these things. Presence of experts and face to face interaction with Principal of the school will really be very helpful. The organisation does not have funds to support the visit of volunteer.

More about the project and current plans:

What are they planning

Mamta Mishra is the principal of the School. Both of her own children are deaf and she has an experience of 25 years of working with deaf children. Her son Anupam (he is also deaf) is a computer professional and currently working as computer operator in Indian railways What Mamta and Anupam have in mind about use of Computers and IT for their school:

1. The school currently has 70 deaf children, studying in class’s I-X. They follow the same syllabus that the general students of the state follow and appear for the same exam. As the school is a semi government and partially aided by government, generally it faces scarcity of resources and is unable to provide good salaries to its teacher. Hence there is always a dearth of teachers. More over the children need a lot of time to understand the course through written text. Availability of Computer and IT can help in addressing the issue of fewer teachers to teach course curricula. They can solve practice papers on computers instead of having the printed copies that cost them a lot.  More over visuals may help in making the study interesting and in enhanced understanding of the course components. Like the function of heart or other body parts.
2. Every year there are 8-10 children who appear for class X exam. After this there is no facility available for deaf students in the state to further studies and as most of the students belong to poor families they try to earn for them.  Some of them are interested in perusing a career in computer related work. Anupam provides preliminary training to them and after that these students join private computer training centers to get certificates. But the services are paid so not all students can avail them. More over Anupam has currently only one computer. These students are not able to get direct admissions to any computer training centers because of their deaf status.  If the school has the facility of its own it can provide training to more number of students. And school can itself offer the certificates so that students are able to get jobs.
3. The school provides training in sewing, painting, making artificial jewelries etc especially to girls. They also organize summer courses for rural girls.  The problems are always of marketing these products though it’s difficult but perhaps internet can help them getting in contact with the larger customer base.
4. If I am right some of the foundations in India have prepared CDs on live demo of very useful routine works like electric fuse repairing, first aid, hygiene etc. Availability of such a centre will certainly help these children in learning these routine but very important things.
5. Computer would help them in learning the sign language through available CDs.
6. Entertainment and networking with the friends.
7. I agree to Angela that it can be the first of its type experiment to initiate such things in this region.

What is available?

1. Anupam is an asset. As he is a trained computer person and understand the needs of deaf children. I am attaching his brief bio data to give an idea of what he knows on computers. He is very keen to start this centre.
2. Mamta has a 25 years of working with the deaf children.
3. They do have sufficient space to start with 05 Computers and to establish a computer and IT lab for the school and they have one computer right now.
   

What needs to be done?

1. Preparing a plan about what will be done through computers and IT.
2. Collecting the resources/raising funds for resources: Computers and software
3. Training the school staff
4. Arranging for maintenance and repair facilities

 So wanna be part of this exciting opportunity??? Let me repeat again the organisation will not be in position to bear your visit expenses. You’ll need to plan your visit or offline help you can provide on your own. Plz quickly mail me if you are willing to be part of helping them make a difference and change many lives…

Best Regards, Prarthana Prarthana Unkalkar Head - iVolunteer Centres

iVolunteer -- Your skills can change lives. www.iVolunteer.in

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About Bilaspur

Bilaspur(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilaspur,_Chhattisgarh) is located in  Chhattisgarh region in Bilaspur District, India. It is the third-largest city in the state.

How to reach

Bilaspur is a regional hub for the railway system. It is the zonal head office of South East Central Railway. It is well connected to the rest of the country through the Indian Railways. The Rajdhani Express (besides several other daily trains) connects Bilaspur to New Delhi. The station is on the main Mumbai-Kolkata (Calcutta) rail line with daily connections to Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad. It is also the originating station for daily trains to Bhopal, Indore, Nagpur and Raipur. Daily connections are also available for Amritsar, Agra, Gwalior, Roorkee, Haridwar, Vishakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Rourkela, Puri, Tatanagar, Patna, Chhapra, Gondia, Raigarh and Durg. It is also connected by direct trains toKochi (Cochin), Chennai (formerly Madras), Bangalore,Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Porbandar, Gorakhpur and many other cities and towns in India.

The city is connected with Mumbai and Kolkata via Raipur through National Highway network. Bilaspur is on NH-200 connecting Raipur and Raigarh on either side.

The nearest airport is Raipur(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana_Airport) that is 120 KMs from Bilaspur. Raipur is well connected to bilaspur via trains and buses and private taxies.

Three-wheeled, black and yellow Auto rickshaws, referred to as autos, is a popular form of transport. They can accommodate up to eitgh passengers. Local transportation also includes human pulled Cycle Rickshaws, horse drawn Tongas.And just started City Bus services, which covers almost the city with a cheap fare.

Where to stay

There are many hotels in Bilaspur ranging from 600/ per day to 2000/ per day .