Divya Trust

The statistics are staggering! There are over 300,000 deaf children in India; the southern state of Tamil Nadu alone accounts for about 70,000. Whatever the accuracy of the figures, there is no denying the fact that India has one of the largest deaf populations in the world. There are only 47 deaf schools in the state which means that that the majority of speech and hearing impaired children get little or no formal education and are doomed to a dark future.

The quality of education given to even those who do attend schools leave a lot to be desired. Teachers struggle with common text books, there are no special educational aids and the language development of the children is woefully inadequate. While there are some NGOs working to make a difference in this space, given the sheer magnitude of the need there is room for many more.

Diya Trust:

In comes Diya. Formed by a group of like minded individuals with concern for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and registered as a charitable trust, Diya’s vision is to work towards poverty eradication, 100% literacy and integration of differently abled individuals and the downtrodden into mainstream education and employment systems in this country.

While that is a huge agenda, for the present the Trust wishes to focus its energies on assisting the speech and hearing impaired in Tamil Nadu to begin with. Its principal founder Mrs.Rebecca Isaac is eminently qualified in this domain and has decades of field experience in rural schools in Tamil Nadu. Recently she underwent a year long training programme sponsored by European Commission in the U.K, Netherlands and Czech Republic; as part of the programme, she was also able to study teaching methods in European countries.

Remedial measures proposed by Diya :

The written word is important for the deaf child; when the deaf child is not effectively hearing through his/her hearing aid, uptake of new information is primarily through the visual mode. This could be a sign language (which has not been well developed in India), lip reading (a minimal percentage of deaf children are efficient lip readers) or through the written word.

Special reading resources are needed for the deaf as reading has the potential to be used as an effective medium with the deaf child. Given the deaf child’s serious language disability, they cannot access books used by/created for children with no language difficulties. Deaf children who have very unclear speech can use writing as an alternate mode of communication; and writing is learnt via reading. Improving reading skills will improve the effectiveness of the school.

In order to attain these goals, Diya has structured the following plan:
1. to design, develop and produce resource materials and teaching aids such as books, games, educational toys, CDs, videos, magazines, etc., for developing language ( both regional and English) and communication skills in children. In this task, the Project Director will be assisted by Special Educators, Language Specialists , Psychologists and Graphic Designers

These teaching aids will consist of Adapted Text Books which carry the same amount of information that the mainstream books have but these are written in simpler language and feature elaborate graphics. There will also be Tamil language exercise books and English learning books for children learning it as second language.

2. To lend and distribute these resource material across urban and rural schools. It is proposed to use a caravan for this purpose. The caravan will be stacked with resource material and visit 4 or 5 nodal points across the state periodically. These nodes will be determined in consultation with the Commissioner for Disabled Persons of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Most likely these will be government schools in major towns. With the involvement of the government it would also be possible to gather teachers of the deaf in that region to assemble at these nodes.

3 To conduct teacher training programmes at these nodes and language workshops and training sessions for teachers, to train them in using the resource materials and in innovative methods of teaching the deaf and in the use of Information Technology. A 5 day training programme is planned at each stop. Given the distances, one visit to a node every two months will make a workable schedule. The remaining time will be utilized for preparation, collection of feedback and analysis. The specialist staff will also have an opportunity to deal with peculiar or difficult cases.

At every subsequent visit the material will be graded higher; with about six visits to each node every year, the students can climb up the learning ladder steadily. At the end of 5 years their mastery of subjects should enable them to attain a level of comprehension equal to that of students without this disability

4. To assess hearing loss, language and communication skills and management of hearing aids of the hearing impaired.

5. To provide for the dissemination of literary, scientific and technical information and communication skills through educational and literary surveys, publication of journals, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, easy read books, pamphlets, etc. in both English and Tamil.

6. To run student camps and competitions to improve self esteem of special children, identification and development of talents, to build communication skills and to teach them about culture and ethnicity.

7. To encourage, promote and associate with integrated rural development programmes and schemes including rural re-construction programmes formulated in conformity with similar policies and programmes adopted by Central and State Governments from time to time.

While the foregoing plan of action represents Diya’s proposal for implementation in Tamil Nadu over the next 5 years, there are several other measures that the organization would like to take up for young adults and others in the areas of health care and vocational training, not detailed here. One specific area that Diya would like to explore is teaching English as second language to the adult deaf. The Founder has personal contacts and rapport with European experts in this field who are most willing to assist Diya with education aids.

Plan of action:

– set up an office in Chennai
– appoint a full time Director and other staff (graphic designer,deaf educator,speech therapist, audiologist, psychologist, computer teachers, English teachers. (Part time) Finance Director, administrative and secretarial staff.
– equip it with computers, printers, photo copier, scanner
– undertake a visit to all schools in the state to announce Diya’s mission.
– register with the government Commissioner for the Disabled and get him to write recommendatory letters to all the schools in the state.
– buy / collect old story books and adapt them for the deaf. Design and develop other graphic intensive teaching aids
– buy a caravan and turn it into a mobile library

The attached budget shows the expenditure: The total project is costed at INR.19,442,997 equivalent to UKP 228,227 (UKPounds Two Hundred Twenty Eight Thousand Two Hundred Twenty Seven).In order to get the project off the ground, the sum required would be INR 4,867,000 equivalent to UKP 57,181(UKPounds Fifty Seven Thousand One Hundred Eighty One)

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