Directors of Lucknow-based NGO and Puducherry special school bag Sentience awards

PUDUCHERRY: Lucknow-based non-government organisation Drishti Samajik Sansthan

directors

Shalu Singh and Atharva Bahadur were presented the All India Sentience Award for social responsibility while Puducherry-based Satya Special School director-treasurer Chitra Shah was presented All India Sentience Award for impacting inclusivity of special children.

Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research director Major General (retired) Ashok Chatterjee and Commanding Officer of 1 Puducherry Girls' Indep Coy NCC Col. Piyush Srivastava presented the awards to the husband-wife couple and Shah in the presence of art enthusiast Christina Joseph in a simple function.

The awards were instituted by a Puducherry-based organization, Spixels, which organises all India photography contests for special children every year. Meghna Agnihotri is the founder-director of Spixels.

Drishti Samajik Sansthan was established by Neeta Bahadur in 1990 in Lucknow. The

NGO

has made more than 4,000 children suffering from disabilities and other issues stand on their own feet and lead an almost independent life.

The NGO runs a special school which has more than 300 children with different levels of disability from 60 villages in the Bakshi Ka Talab and Chinhat blocks of Lucknow district. The NGO runs this school using its own resources without any government assistance.

The NGO has also set up a training and shelter home where more than 200 orphaned children with mental and multiple disabilities live and get education and vocational training. These children are mostly those found abandoned in garbage bins, platforms, footpaths, roads and trains etc.

Satya Special School caters to more than 900 children with special needs through its seven urban and three rural centres. Its mobile therapy crew provides door-to-door service to over 124 disabled children living in Puducherry's 44 fringe localities.

Chitra Shah receiving the award

Apart from providing free and quality rehabilitation services to the underprivileged, the school has been working tirelessly toward making children with special needs as self-sufficient as possible to alleviate the social stigma that is prevalent among the public at large.

The school also runs a newborn high-risk clinic at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (Jipmer) where at-risk children susceptible to developmental delay are identified. In the last two years, the clinic has identified more than 2,500 newborn babies out of which 50% have been provided rehabilitation and counselling services.


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