Arvind Saurabh -Residential Home for Intellectually Challenged

Every parent’s main worry is what will happen to their child after they are there no more. The siblings have a life of their own and it becomes difficult for them to take care of their intellectually challenged persons. There is dire need for residential homes.

I had privilege to visit one such home at Pune called Arvind Saurabh, also known as Umed Pariwar.  Founded in 1990, Arvind Saurabh is Pune based Parent’s organisation that works for the specialised needs and betterment of Mentally Challenged and Cerebral Palsy persons. This home is located at Wadaki Nala, on Hadapsar Saswad Road on the foothills of Kanifnath temple. It is located at 25kms from Pune.

We drove through barren land, through the mud path to arrive at beautiful 10-acres wide campus in the midst of large open landscape.

We were greeted by Jyoti Nahar, one of the parents, who is the resident at the campus. She took us around showing us the facilities at the home.

At the vocational room, lots of activities are carried out such as paper bag making, making office files, envelops, handmade paper articles, gift articles and many such activities.

The building is very neat with a large courtyard in the centre where children can play outdoor activities, surrounded on all sides with large bright rooms. The dormitory had 6-8 beds in a room, fairly distant with beds and cupboards. The bathrooms are large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and designed to cater to their special needs. There are smaller private rooms upstairs for children who are independent or wish to stay with their live-in parents.

We were then invited for lunch. The campus has in-house vegetable gardening and diary facility. The food was nutritious and very tasty.

I was quite impressed with the facilities at this place. There was solar and windmill energy, a swimming pool with hydrotherapy, modern kitchen facility with dinning hall, polyclinic facility for health check up, gymnasium facilities and guest house for parents, so that they can come and stay with their children.

The intellectually challenged adults looked quite content and cheerful and were quite happy to meet us and click pictures with us.

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Aditi Verma – Entrepreneur With Down Syndrome

The greatest happiness that any teacher feels is when her students achieves success in life. When the student is special with downs syndrome, the happiness is ten fold.

Normally the first reaction that the parents get when they get a special child  with down syndrome is  one of shock and confusion. They feel their world has fallen apart, they are frightened for the future. But after few years, they begin to understand their child and learn that children with down syndrome are really very talented. If trained under special care, they are as capable of leading a normal life as any other normal person, only a little bit slower and may need supervision.

Aditi Verma beat disability and became entrepreneur when her parents gifted her with eatery on new year’s day last year.

On my recent visit to school at CBD, Belapur, I decided to spend one afternoon at Bhoomi Mall at CBD after school hours. Bhoomi mall is still new, with many shops waiting to find its owner, but three floors upstairs is a small eatery called ‘Aditi’s Corner’ that sells chocolates, drinks and snacks and is run by Aditi Verma who has Down Syndrome.

“What will you have?” She asks as soon as we settle on the chair outside the eatery. I want to give her business so I ask her what on menu. The dish of the day is ‘Vegetarian Briyani’

“Everyday is different lunch” she explains. The food is cooked at home and the servings are just heated in microwave at the stall. There are many offices in this mall that patronise her café.

I glance into her eatery and see chocolates, wafers, biscuits, Maggi packets, soft drinks along with sandwiches. There is a small fridge in one corner, a coffee and tea making machine on the other side. I am not really hungry and cannot decide what to order.

“Will you have corn pattice?” she offers. I order for one dish that I share with my friend. The frozen corn pattice are removed from fridge and heated on hot grill and served with tomato sauce and mint chutney. It tastes good. She has two staff members, Sardar Paramjit who takes care of cooking at the café and Ram, the delivery boy, who carries the deliveries to the offices in the mall.

She sits down with us for a friendly chat and I am impressed. During her days at our school at Swami Brahmamand Prathisthan, Maths was her favorite subject, and she had won the ‘Best Student Award’ in 2010 for her overall performance. Besides academics, Aditi loved dancing and dramatics and in an inter-school competition in 2012, won the ‘Best Actress Award’

Phone rings and she takes pen and jots down the order. Some one in the mall wants sandwiches and coffee. She repeats the order to her delivery boy and then turns her attention back to us and talks about herself. At 6pm she will go home.

“Will you go home alone? I ask

“Yes, I will take autorickshaw” she says

She is quite independent and confident. Aditi Verma has taken her initiative further. She represented Maharastra as an entrepreneur in the Self Advocate Forum of India (SAFI) at Bangaluru on December 9, 2016

“I even gave a lecture on my initiative and my desire to expand it.” she has been nominated as the State representative for SAFI

Later, we go one floor down the mall to meet her father who owns an office in the same building. He is one proud father who speak fondly of her achievements.

Hope is re-kindled for other special children too.