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Svayam Foundation sponsors Accessible Vans to Mobility India

‘Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities’ has been talked about quite a lot. Persons with disabilities are encouraged to participate in all the spheres of life, access education, earn a livelihood and lead a better quality of life. But this will be far attainable without eliminating the accessibility issues which are visibly dominant in the inaccessible public spaces, schools, colleges, workplaces as well as public transport. 

With the aging population, increase in life expectancy people with disabilities and those relying on various assistive devices make a growing population. For this group, transport holds much significance which should ensure accessibility too. Mostly it is observed that due to inaccessible transport and environment, people with disabilities prefer to stay indoors instead of being out and about in the community. Mobility constraints are a major obstacle to disability-inclusive development, as they exacerbate the economic, social, and personal isolation of persons with disabilities, and tend to push them further into poverty.

MI has been working towards a barrier free environment for people with disabilities through the unique initiative of ‘Accessible Mobile Van’ since 2000. It provides a safe and accessible commute for wheelchair users, elderly and especially women. To enhance the reach of the accessible transport services in, MI has received 3 accessible vehicles contributed by Ms Sminu Jindal, MD, Jindal SAW Limited. The vehicles will be operated from MI offices in Bangalore and Guwahati. Extending thanks to Ms Sminu, Ms Albina Shankar, Director, MI mentioned “thanks for recognising the importance of accessibility. The vehicles will be benefitting wheelchair users, elderly and others who are temporarily on a wheelchair. 

Family Fun Festival 

MI’s one of the uniqueness from the inception has been always striving to remain connected with our service users, their parents and the community at large through our activities. Various programmes are conducted to achieve the same and one of our new activities for this year was to create awareness on importance of recreation for the people with disability and their family members through our Family fun Festival.

Being involved in sport and recreational activities not only helps your physical health, but it can also facilitate the creation of friendships with people that you may otherwise not have met and the development of leadership and collaboration skills. Sports and recreation holds equal significance for people with disabilities as well as their care providers. 

60 members involving parents, caregivers and grandparents of children with disabling conditions actively participated in the programme and gained motivational information from successful parents of children with different disability, who have crossed all the hurdles to overcome in bringing up their children. Play therapy was organized for the children and their parents.

 Role of mother in one’s life is inevitable. Mothers and grandmothers were honoured for taking the responsibility in parenting their children, ignoring their disability rather focusing on their special abilities. 

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