18th April 2015
The start of our ShikshaDaan Yatra has been from Bilaspur, which is a district in Himachal Pradesh. We had shortlisted two NGOs to meet there and had sent the ShikshaDaan presentation to them beforehand. We didn’t hear back from them and assumed that maybe they were not keen or maybe the email never reached them. Once we reached Bilaspur, we called the both of them.
ne of them told us he was in Delhi and since it was a second Saturday on the 10th, the office was closed. We tried calling the second NGO on the given landline and got no response and then we found the cellphone number of the founder Dr. Mallika Nadda. We called her and she picked up the phone and said that Mr. Kashmir Singh would come and meet us.
Dr. Mallika Nadda is union minister Shri J.P. Nadda’s wife. Once we started reading about her work in H.P we were very keen to partner with Chetna Association. Mr. Kashmir Singh called us the same afternoon and came over to meet us alongwith Ashwani. What nice people !! Apparently they were also planning to take the day off since it was a second Saturday, but just felt like coming to the office and ended up getting a call from Dr. Mallika to meet us. We agreed to visit the centre on Monday and here are some pictures of the Chetna day care centre and the office where they conduct the two year diploma course in teaching mentally retarded and disabled children. Every year they have a batch of 25 to 30 students who take up the course and then they get placed in several schools where they augment the teaching for mentally retarded, autistic and Cerebral Palsy affected children. They even go home and teach when the child is unable to come to the class.
We found out about Chetna Association through an internet search. We saw that Geeta a special child from Chetna Association had won a gold in the special Olympics. Chetna runs three day care centres where they bring the children from the regular schools and augment their learning so that they can rejoin the regular classes. They also help in getting these children placed in local workplaces so that they can be independent. There is a lot of interest in sports and Chetna promotes that.
It was an absolute pleasure meeting genuine people like Ashwani and Mr, Kashmir Singh and ShikshaDaan will fund any diploma student who is dropping out because of financial reasons and also any child in the day care centre who wants to study further. For the movie buffs, Yami Gautam is from Bilaspur and her mother studied two classes behind Mr. Kashmir Singh :):):). Our Chetna (awareness) certainly grew with this visit.
I met and addressed the 1st and 2nd year diploma students – a great bunch of potential teachers.
Invalid Displayed Gallery