Thank you for being there

A journey that started on 10th May 1995 has reached 25 years today 

from Junior Accounts Assistant 

To Social Worker (experiential expert)

From Leassure and Sports Unit Coordinator 

To Advocacy Unit Coordinator

From Advocacy Unit Coordinator

To Assistant Coordinator of another form of the same and 

To the Coordinator of DLU South 

From State Coordinator of NDN

To Regional Coordinator of NDN

To Director DRI, HRLN

From Trainee 

To trainer of Trainers 

From Founder General Secretary of Ektha 

To Executive Director of Ektha 

To Founder Trustee of Equals Center for Promotion of Social Justice 

From General Body Member of Vidya Sagar

To South Asia Representative at the board of APDPO, United  

To Representative if the Disability Sector in the Core Group of a National Cross Sectoral Confluence, Vikalp Sangam 

From member of Local Level Committee under the National Trust 

To member of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act Drafting Committee 

From advocating for Disability Rights 

To Trainer in Para Sports, Boccia

To organiser of State and National Tournament

It has been tremendous journey of of 25 years 

It would never have been possible alone

Thank you mentors 

Poonam aka, Mrs Poonam Natarajan

Usha aka, Mrs Usha Ramakrishnan 

Rajul aka, Mrs Rajul Padmanaban

Dipti aka, Miss Dipti Batia 

Mr Chithambaranathan

Mr Javed Abidi 

Mr Lobithas 

Thank you my dream team at DLU South, Vidya Sagar 

Mr Dhanasekar 

Miss Smitha Sadhashivan 

Mrs Meenakshi B.

Mrs Shanthi Srinivasn 

Mr Devi Chakravarthi 

Mr Guru Prasad

Mrs Deepa Kalaivanan 

Mr Amarthyo

Mr Vincent 

Miss Jennifer Fatogun 

Thank you long time colleagues in South India 

Mr Deepak Nathan 

Mr Srinivaslu 

Mr Paul Ramanatan 

Mr Simmachandran 

Thank you 

The Chennai DRA Team I am not taking names here as the list endless

Thank you Ektha team 

Mr Dhanasekar 

Mr Dheepakh PS 

Mr Prabakaran A

Mrs Lakshmi Bala 

Mr  Sathish Kumar

Mr Sunderaman Kannan 

Mr Amarnath Prabakaran 

Mr Balu Mahendran 

Miss Kalvina Rajendran 

Mr Ajay Balakrishnan 

Thank you Equals team

Miss Amba Salelkar 

Miss Sudha Ramamurthy 

Mrs meenakshi B 

Miss Algammai

Thank you sponsors volunteers and other supporters 

Without even one of you the journey would not have been as complete and memorable as it has been 

Impact of corona and lock down on persons with disabilities 4 Radha Ramesh

As we all cope with lockdowns and social distancing ,we ,the rehabilitation professionals at Vidya Sagar are concerned about  the persons with disabilities and their families.

Social distancing will be a huge difficulty in practice for people with disabilities and their caregivers .

       How do we monitor and ensure hygiene and safety of persons/children with disabilities who have high restrictions in participation .They have to depend on caregiver for all their needs.The caregiver could be their own parent or sibling or a family member or a paid attendant. 

Lack of awareness among parents and primary care givers is a major concern. 

This is a serious concern as it would affect the health of the person with disability and would have a long term impact .

This type of long isolation holidays may lead to other complications such as deterioration of physical condition due to lack of services like physio therapy, occupational therapy etc.

When students with disabilities return back to school they would have to put in double the effort -coping with physical therapy and academics .

The team from Vidya Sagar is constantly in touch with parents sharing concerns and extending emotional support in this stressful hour .

We are sharing strategies and sending activities to the parents to be done with or by the students. 

We also request them to use this time for family bonding, focusing on choice making and decision making opportunities for the person /child with disability and make them part of the family and participate in executing the daily activities.

Food for our beneficiaries staying in remote villages is another concern. Getting their monthly maintenance allowances. The government advance of 1000 for the next 3 months has not yet been received by many people. Most for the village people solely depending on this maintenance allowance for their daily expenditure

Radha Ramesh ,

Parent of two adults with disabilities who have high restrictions in participation 

&

Director ,

Vidya Sagar.

impact of corona and lock down on persons with disabilities 3 Rajkumar M

As a person with Beckers Muscular Dystrophy, the current duty of Corona virus is making me to think as below.

Being a person with disability i should be careful by not venturing out from home to save me otherwise it will be a very worst thing for me to get quarantined at hospital as managing myself will be difficult. 

Socialising was a best stress reliever for a person with disability but being holed up at home for 13 days & working from home brings little stress.

Another fear is that if my family member or care taker gets affected, how can I cope up with my life.

The best reliever of stress and making myself relaxed is the presence of social media.

Rajkumar M

Person with disability based in Chennai 

&

Plant Lead Engineer working in a reputed MNC

Impact of corona and lock down on persons with disabilities 2 Dhanasekar A

I Don't remember of this outbreak initially, today a pandemic COVID 19. As a person with disability with my capabilities I don't see it a major concern. 

What really is the concern here? With the imposition of Section 144 pan India my worry is how would Parsons with Disabilities get their essential services on a daily basis. Here I am talking  about persons with disabilities who have high restrictions in participation. How does a person get the services of an escort for buying essentials? Will he be allowed to go out? A million dollar question. 

As we have always been reiterating there a need for including the issues of persons with disabilities during planning and implementation of disater management. 

The positive factor here I see is spending of quality time with family members and without shadow of doubt safety of one and all.

Dhanasekar A

Disability Rights Activist 

impact corona and lock down on persons with disabilities 1 Dheepakh PS

When the Central Government announced a lockdown, for 21 days from last night (24.3.20- from midnight), it was 8 pm, so how do we go to the ATM, where the machines are not accessible and withdraw money in just under 4 hours? Even if it is one of the services which is open, without security guards around, it is not safe for us. An accessible and mobile ATM would solve this issue. 

What about care givers for people with severe disabilities? How do they find a way out? These are questions which have to be looked into,  before taking such decisions. 

The effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic which has thrown all our work routines  into a dizzy, suspended sporting events across the globe, has taught me an important lesson. Never to procrastinate things and leave it until they are too late. 

As a Person with Disability,  who commutes a lot, this curfew is indeed a difficult thing to follow, but have to do it for the benefit of all of us. 

My biggest concern is about essentials, albeit I have stocked enough for the time being, there's a sense of what-if popping up every now and then. 

Mobility as a person with disability is certainly taken a beating and though am fortunate to have shops nearby but am thinking of those for whom there are environmental barriers and attitudinal barriers imposed by the society when trying to access those. 

While people are running helter skelter to stock up, there is every possibility that the Person with disability might be left out in the crowd?

Am not questioning the government s decision to lockdown but asking them to keep PwDs in mind too, when they come across such circumstances.

Dheepakh PS 

Person with Disability 

&

Journalist working with a prominent Daily 

Man ki Baat or Man Mani by Rajiv Rajan

Man ki baat means talking from the heart.
If man ki baat has to be real it has to be a two way process Man mani mean doing whatever one feel like or dictating whatever one wants to.

Man ki baat never happened with Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 but man mani happened. Actual stakeholders were not even a part of process in the initial stages leave alone listening their man ki baat
Leave alone the the man ki baat of the stakeholders. Even the ratification of United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities never mattered when doing this man mani.
Article14 of Constitution of India provides for equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. It states: "The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India."
This has been violated in this case of man mani

Man ki baat never happened during the abrogation of article 370 but man mani happened
Man ki bath of political starwalts were not allowed leave alone the general public. Man mani was also evident when some foreign delegates were invited to show to the world how normal the situation was in the valley when the situation was not so normal to say the least.
Article 19(1)(a) of Indian Constitution says that "all citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression. Freedom of Speech and expression means the right to express one's own convictions and opinions freely by words of mouth, writing, printing, pictures or any other mode". This was violated for a very long time in fact even now it is being violated in Jamu and Kashmir.

Man ki baat never happened with Citizens (Amendment) Act but man mani happened.
Article 14 of the Constitution of India provides for equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. It states: "The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India."
In this man mani also the life line article of the constitution has been violated.

Does the government of India really want to listen to its citizen's man ki baat or does it only want citizens of India to listen its man ki bath and accept it?

Results of all the one way traffic of "man ki baat" is there for everyone to see
"Divyang" the most inappropriate lable given to persons with disabilities.
Protests across the country.
Insecurity among the citizens.

Man ki baat or man mani? is the question to be answered but will it ever be answered? Is a billion dollar question.

Does the government have any respect for the constitution? is another big question with out much of an answer.

And for the first time I am seeing the ruling dispensation taking a rally in support of an enactment by the parliament that too when the matter is being heard by the Supreme Court of the country.

Where are we going with all this? 

#wethepeople 

#anticaa

How I got introduced to Boccia by Sathish Kumar R

I am a person with Cerebral Palsy using a Automated Wheelchair. On one working day in early 2016 received a call from Mr. Rajiv Rajan and Mr. Harikrishnan from Ektha they were planning to start to develop a game called Boccia. They said “ we are going to conduct a sports camp & you also come on Sunday”. The first question I asked was " will I be able to play? Do I need to come surely?" The reason I asked this was my hand power was not very good. After much hesitation I went on that Sunday to just see what it was all about. Once I went in person and saw how the game works and its design, I started getting interest in it.

I used to try to throw the balls with both my hands but with much efforts I was not able to throw far, then I started using assistive device (ramp) to throw balls. This is where I got confidence and full interest on the game. I felt that I will be able to reach the target. Thereafter in few days, I was able to grab all informations about Boccia. In a few months, myself and another trainer Mr. Sundar used to manage the weekends training camps, I also used to play in it.
As I got more interested in game, I too joined the organizing team of Ektha.  We Ektha the team ourselves had to get proper informations about the game to train others officially.

I along with Mr. Rajiv Rajan and Mr. Dheepakh went to RDT, in Andhra Pradesh to get trained ourself. We got to know many aspects of boccia, playing methods, rules, categorisation, etc.

After we got trained, we started to conduct regular boccia practice camps on Saturday evening at Vidya Sagar. From then on we slowly started to spread the game in and around Chennai.

We conducted camps in other nearby districts. Though I used to play in weekends, I also used to co-ordinate with others to spread & get support from others.

This continued for a while and after few months, in early 2017 we conducted our first boccia tournament. The response from the teams was very good. Then on we started to expand our wings, by giving many trainings at different districts of Tamil Nadu with the support from Beroe Inc.

We were able to get many interested and talented players through this. We have conducted more than 70 camps, few district level tournaments and 2 state level tournaments so far.

I am a part of coordinating team and we are working with players, teams, volunteers and corporate for the development of Boccia in India.

Our altimate goal is to bring more numbers players to this game and build an Indian team for the 2024 Paralympics.