Little Vani meets Loretians with Big Hearts

Little Loretians Learning to Finger Spell the Alphabet

Little Vani, the mascot of VAANI, Deaf Children’s Foundation, met 400 students of Loreto Day School Sealdah to tell them about childhood deafness and to sensitise the participants to the cause of children who are deaf.

The session was conducted by Atreyee Kar, Resource Management Officer at VAANI and she took the children through the journey of discovering the challenges faced by deaf children through examples that the students could relate to. The participants, comprising of students of Class V to Class X, were asked to imagine a life without music, a life where the only sound that exists is the sound of silence. They were asked to do a simple exercise of plugging their ears for a few seconds while Atreyee spoke to them softly. When asked how it feels, the response from the majority was, “it is frustrating to know someone is talking to you and not being able to hear what is being said!”

Sundeep Kothari, Training Assistant of VAANI and a deaf role model as well, performed a mime about a child who wanted a balloon but did not have the money to buy it. The mime was an instant hit with the children and drove home the truth that the deaf just communicate differently, they think, they feel the need to connect, they emote – all they lack is the ability to hear, and that is what makes them different.

The awareness workshop ended in high spirits as Sundeep taught the students how to finger spell the alphabet and there was a rush among the students to volunteer to finger spell their names. Little Vani realised that the workshop was a success when the new friends of VAANI offered to make friendship bands for the children that VAANI works with.

VAANI at the "never-the-less" Conference

Panellist Ms. Shanti Raghavan speaking about the role of workplace solutions in building an enabling environment

The “never-the-less” campaign was a month long campaign reaching out to 6000 schools, 200 colleges, 300 corporates and 50 NGOs, with the help of 1500 volunteers, for the cause of ‘unifying efforts, investments and innovation for addressing inclusion of persons with disabilities’. The efforts were extended to the fields of education, work places, transport and public places. The conference was attended by multiple stakeholders like, Ms. M V Savitri : Director, State Dept for the Empowerment of Differently Abled & Senior Citizens, Mr. Ashwin Mahesh : Adviser to the Office of the Chief Minister, Mr. Raja Shanmugham : President & Chief People Officer - Happiest Minds Technologies Pvt Ltd, Ms. Meenu Bhambhani: Global Head CSR, Mphasis, Mr. Subramani L : Retina India, Ms. Shanti Raghavan : Founder Enable India,Ms. Malathi Holla: Senior Manager at Syndicate Bank - Paralympian, Asian Silver medallist, Mr. George Abraham : CEO, SCORE Foundation New Delhi, Mr. G.G.Hegde: HRD manager, BMTC and Ms. Vasanthi Srinivasan: Chairperson, Centre for Corporate Governance and Citizenship, IIMB.

The panellists spoke about the various issues plaguing the inclusion of persons with disability, and how the movement created by the never-the-less campaign could bring together people from various fields to join in and contribute to the cause, in making the process of inclusion smoother. The coordinator of the event, Mr. CC Joseph rightly remarked that in a country that boasts of its unity in diversity, it is strange that one experiences exclusion. After all, the entire concept of diversity is based on acceptance.

As was pointed out by one of the panellists, one of the biggest challenges that India faces today is that the society is a salad bowl and not a melting pot. So we don’t really have an inclusive society. The main aim of the movement is to direct the journey from being a salad bowl to a melting pot. The various stakeholders spoke about the policies they have undertaken to make inclusion a reality in their respective fields and also, the challenges they are facing while undertaking these measures.

The main aim of the conference was to initiate dialogue across a section of people coming from various backgrounds to align personal purpose to collective purpose. It is not disability which is the problem, it is the way people think and react to it – it is the attitudes that need to change.

The conference marked the beginning of a journey to take this movement from Bangalore and Karnataka to the rest of the country in the next five years.

VAANI reaches out to the teachers of Loreto Day School Sealdah

Teaching the teachers how to administer a simple screening test

VAANI organised an awareness programme for 31 teachers at Loreto Day School on childhood deafness and how teachers, as primary caregivers in school can play an important role in helping a deaf child cope with the education system. VAANI’s technical consultant Ms. Sreela Bose spoke to the teachers about why VAANI works with deafness in children and how early intervention can make a lot of difference in a deaf child’s life. The invisibility of deafness stood out as a stark reality for the teachers as they realised how unaware one tends to be about deafness just because it is the ‘invisible handicap’. Sreela’s session also covered important topics like defining hearing impairment and the challenges of being deaf. She ended her session by teaching the teachers a simple screening test that can be administered by them to check if a child has hearing impairment.

Sundeep Kothari, VAANI’s training assistant took over and spoke to the teachers about he lived with his hearing impairment. Sundeep is profoundly deaf and he shared his achievements with the teachers who applauded his efforts. The teachers interacted with Sundeep and asked him a lot of questions.

The involvement and interest shown by the teachers of the school was encouraging for VAANI. The session ended with the teachers expressing a desire to be part of more such sessions on deafness and children to know more about the cause and support it better.