Raipur: Over the years, the government has shown an increased concern towards the welfare of visually-impaired individuals. However, the children who are blind by birth still endure challenges and difficulties and the greatest being the lack of accessible infrastructure for proper education.

There is also a huge lack of study materials in suitable formats and necessary special guidance during learning. So they always have to depend on someone, which sadly is not possible especially for such students who hail from backward areas where even the parents are barely educated.

However, this is not the scenario everywhere. A district in northern Chhattisgarh has set a benchmark in facilitating the education of visually-challenged students. When the District Collector of Gaurela-Pendra-Marwahi District, IAS Richa Prakash Choudhary discovered the plight of visually-impaired students of her district from close quarters, she decided to bring a great change in their lives. 

In order to bolster their participation in education, the Gaurela-Pendra-Marwahi District Administration, along with the Ek-Kadam Foundation has launched a special education resource, under which an exclusive teaching volunteer is provided to such individuals, who administers personal assistance through a supported teaching process.

Collector Richa Prakash Choudhary said: "It was not an easy journey to execute this project but the very idea of education is to be equally accessible to every student and bridge the gap between the inequalities. It is, therefore, necessary that our schools be inclusive to cater every kind of child out there, it is their right to get educated, which includes the students with disabilities as well."

"Our teaching volunteers work with the children, their families and the schools to ensure that the child is able to get a regular education in an inclusive environment. This initiative is to cater the special needs of the visually-impaired, whereby the trained teaching volunteer accompanies the student throughout the innovative and friendly teaching process by means of Braille books and other tactile study-materials and also providing home-teaching facilities to such students, besides conducting skill and personality development," she adds.

Gunjan Gedle, a visually-challenged student’s mother, says that, after joining this learning program, my daughter has now started talking well with all the members of the family. She has also started taking interest in studies, now she can tell about any object kept at the house just by touching. Now she also goes out of the house alone for a stroll a short distance and can even read and tell numbers through the braille tactile dot-kit.

"My daughter has now started going to school happily and can also perform her daily chores like taking bath etc. Seeing all this makes me very happy, and I believe my daughter will also be able to become a successful person in life by getting educated," she said further.

Teaching volunteer Rajkumar Patel says that students have now started recognising things by touch and can also recognize their acquaintances by their voice and now they are taking interest in school education. We are slowly making them familiar with braille reading. In order to boost their morale, we tell them about Helen Keller and other visually-impaired inspirational personalities.

At the government level, there are few schemes for such people but this initiative by IAS Richa Prakash Choudhary in the Gaurela-Pendra-Marwahi District has pioneered the responsibility towards these candidates which indeed is a commendable initiative. /BI/