MI initiated the plan of escalating its rehabilitation services to the Northern Districts of Karnataka, in partnership with organisations working with people with disabilities. This initiative of MI was well appreciated by CBM and the support for carrying out the initiative was supported by CBM.
As a part of the initiative, exploratory visits made to Bidar and Devanagari Districts. The scenario of disability and rehabilitation is found to be quite challenging due to lack of organisations working for people with disabilities, inadequate trained personnel and the existing services is unable to meet the rehabilitation needs of the community.
Deepalaya established in 2006, is an organisation is working for people with disabilities in the 30 villages of Bidar District covering 4 to 5 Panchayats. Their activities include education for children with disabilities, functioning of SHGs as well as conducting vocational trainings for the youth and disabled people. According to the observations during the exploratory visit, 4000 people and children are in need of rehabilitation services in Bidar. To cater to the need an effective and structured rehabilitation service provision was proposed by MI in partnership with Deepalaya.
Awareness programs on various kinds of disability and its management were conducted at Bidar and Devanagari for the staff, community members, SHG members and ASHA workers. An assessment and fitment camp was held at Bidar during June, 2016, 48 people were provided with the 85 assistive devices as per their need.