Transforming the Lives of the Specially Abled

Ragothaman Ramesh

Do you know what is common among Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Franklin D Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Stephen Hawkings, Sudha Chandran, JK Rowling, Tom Cruise, and Walt Disney?

We do admire the famous and successful personalities. But are we aware that they are and were specially abled with hearing impairment, visual impairment, dyslexic and learning disabilities? The one common factor that was a common thread among all was their Determination to make a difference in this world.

In spite of the disability, these people have brought in transformation into the lives of people. Lets remember that “Disability is just a matter of Perception”.

Specially-abled or PwDs make one-fifth of the world’s population. PwDs include people having challenges in vision, hearing, or any other bodily impairments.

Specially-abled people are the extraordinary ones who want to lead a regular life, achieve dreams, and make this world a better place for all of us to live. In spite of physical challenges and struggles from the society in achieving their dreams, they work consistently as super determined workers, to achieve their dreams.

The specially abled face a lot of mental and physical challenges which adds to their everyday stress. Dyslexic persons have challenges in memorizing and differentiating things. Specially abled children face societal challenges like commuting to work place, travelling abroad and socializing with their peer groups.

Specially-abled people have to be treated at par with others. We should support them in aspects of life like education, health and nutrition, their passion, etc. We should empower them to become a vital part of the society. There are various steps to be taken in the society to make the specially-abled people feel less different from the others. Government is also taking various measures to improve their quality of life.

Samarthanam Trust for the disabled, a National Award-winning Non-Governmental Organization based out of Bangalore empowers the specially-abled people through its integrated programmes like specially-abled children’s education, Skill empowerment programme to pursue their dreams, extracurricular activities like sports, art, and other cultural activities.

The trust runs free residential schools for the specially-abled children to help them learn better and improve their skills. Livelihood Resource Centre”, a skilling program for the specially-abled youth is also set up to focus on the training of the youth with necessary skill-sets for their sustained livelihood. Samarthanam focuses on placements after the training. It has 13 centers across the country, and has trained around 16000 youths as of Sep’20.

The trust pursues sports as a medium to improve inclusion of the specially-abled people. Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI) established in 2010 fosters the cricketing dreams of visually impaired cricket players and provides a platform to portray their unbound talent in the game of blind cricket. CABI is affiliated to World Blind Cricket Ltd (WBC). CABI is the trust’s sports wing to empower the people into sports.

Conclusion :

Lets join together to help the specially-abled people emotionally and financially by educating, empowering and elevating their lives. Lets go creative in helping the specially-abled and also spread the message to the world to solicit support for them. Elevating the lives of others will bring each one of us infinite satisfaction and happiness. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”.