SUSHIKSHANA SAADANA Poor finances force school into blind alley
DH News Service, Bangalore: In many ways, Sushikshana Saadana, the integrated-education high school run by the Karnataka Welfare Association for the Blind (KWAB) in the City, has been innovative. While doubts over the ability of visually challenged children to learn Science and Mathematics persist, the school took the challenge head-on, innovated tools and tried its best to make Science interesting, even inspirational. What's more, the 70 totally blind or low-vision but able-bodied rural children are taught in English under the CBSE syllabus -- another 'first' to its name. Parashivamurthy, KWAB General Secretary, shows a special frame made by a teacher that allows students to make a tactile impression of a straight line (using a stylus) on a paper. "Of course, the children have to put an extra effort to learn things like Geometry, which they do," he said. The school, part of KWAB's home education scheme, began with hopes of bringing education to the disabled children. Realising the opportunities that come with communication in English, it switched its medium of instruction and adopted the CBSE syllabus last year, for Standard 8. Financial hurdles However, poor finances constrain the school's ambitions of admitting more children and improving facilities. The situation could even explode into a crisis, as KWAB's loans have soared to around Rs 35 lakh. While the school can generally maintain the children with the Rs 600 each it receives from the Ministry of Social Justice as grant-in-aid, it is struggling to pay the teachers and administrative staff even their woefully insufficient salaries. Worse, the school has been asked to vacate the premises it is functioning at. "We survive on minimum resources. Determined as we are, it may be difficult without wiping off the liabilities totally and building a corpus," Mr Murthy said and appealed to business houses to come forward to help the 400 children under the KWAB care. business houses to come forward to help the 400 children under the KWAB care. business houses to come forward to help the 400 children under the KWAB care. He also requested the State and Central governments to provide Rs 50 lakh to sustain its project in the long run. http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/May142007/state200705141510.asp To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
