The most amazing NGO. Ever.

This past week I went to Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. While there, I was in what SIT calls "workshop" where I got to know an NGO on a deeper level by spending an entire week investigating and researching their practices. The research included conducting interviews, getting debriefs from unit directors and also observation.

The 27 people in my program were (for the first time) split between four different workshops. Everyone was able to attend their first choice workshop and I chose to go to Varanasi and research the Kiran Center; the most amazing NGO ever.

To explain the NGO in a nutshell ... Kiran is an empowerment program for the differently abled and underprivileged. Kiran educates, rehabilitates, and trains "young" people and their parents to increase their quality of life and their integration into society.

The website doesn't do this organization justice, but you can check it out at http://kiranvillage.org

Because you can't get a great picture of the awesomeness of Kiran from the website, I am going to try to relay a portion of the vast amounts of information that I gathered this past week. Because Kiran is just too cool, I don't think this is going to be a short post ... just consider yourself warned.

All Kiran buses are maintained by the automotive unit.

They are cleaned twice a day and all mechanical fixing

takes place within the NGO by the vocational

trainees/teachers.

To start off each day, we (the four other girls and an SIT staff member - who is actually from Varanasi - and I) boarded Kiran buses in town to take us the 45minutes to the Kiran Village. Along the way we picked up countless students and everyone crowded in. There were three buses for students and one for teachers. Each bus for students had a driver and a male aid. If when picking up a child from their "stop" s/he was physically handicapped (60% of the students at Kiran are disabled in some way, and the majority have physical impairments), the aid would elegantly whisk the child from the street, up the steep stairs of the bus, and put them into a seat. In the US, these children would be on "the short bus" with seat belts or restraints; in India, these children were squished on to normal school bus seats and were perfectly fine and happy.

One of the other girls (Miyena) and I rode a bus together one morning. The kids were super fun (as you can see by her face) and we loved interacting in Hinglish.

I couldn't resist putting this cutie on here.
There were so many adorable children!

When we arrived at Kiran each morning, there was an enormous "welcoming" squad of teachers, aids, and students to help all the kids off the bus and into their wheelchairs, walkers or off and running to morning "prayers".

"Prayers" were less religious and more spiritual. They had some quite meditation, some food for thought by famous people (e.g. Gandhiji) and the school moto. This was student led and everyone at the school attended.

There are five main departments of the Kiran Village which I visited during the week: Integrated Education, Special Education, Vocation and Skills Training, Rehabilitation, and Human Resource Training Center.

The doorway into the Lower Kindergarden classroom.
Eye-spy: extremely motivated and studious girl in the
back in a special seat made (on site) for her condition.

Kiran's philosophy is that students of all abilities should learn together - integrated education. There are two main units within the education department, Integrated Education and Special Education. In Integrated Education, all of the "normal" students (which must be below the poverty line) are taught with "differently abled" students. Most of the "different" students have physical impairments. All students are placed based off of skill and not on age. However, there are no 13 year olds in the first grade; most students are within a year of a typical school/grade age. Right now the school only educates up to 7th standard, but plans to increase to 8th next year. After 8th standard, the goal is to have students capable of attending further education outside of the NGO.

The special education department consists of five sections: Academic, Functional Juniors, Functional Seniors, Self Care, and Hearing Impaired.
In the Academic section, special needs students learn academic information at a slower pace and with special needs based methods. In the Functional Junior/Senior (groupings based on age) students learn some academic information but skills are also concentrated on personal skills and social skills. The Self Care section (which serves the most sever cases) teaches personal skills like going to the bathroom, brushing ones own teeth, or feeding oneself.
The Hearing Impaired section has two levels, and trains students to lipread Hindi. The students have their own style of sign language that they all use to communicate with each other and with staff (if the staff lets them use it), but because the goal of Kiran is to train students to integrate and succeed in society, they learn how to lip read and speak (there is an onsite speech therapist along with the teachers).

The methods that Kiran uses are wonderful. I was able to observe four different levels and saw discussions, songs, activities, one on one help, and a simulation.

Physically challenged women in the Art and Design unit
paining a silk scarf which was designed by a MR artist.

The Vocation and Skills Training department has ten sections: Woodworking and IQ Toys, Horticulture, Tailoring, Orthotics, Physiotherapy, Art and Design, Saksham Grihini (capable housewife), Food Preservation, Bakery, and finally Learn and Earn. Participants of the department are 16-30 years old and have varying degrees of mental and physical ability.

It would take forever to go into detail here about each program, but in general: each program has between 1-3 years of training and some  also have an internship for a year after training. The goals of the Training department are to integrate people of different abilities into society and also be able to contribute to society. Once a trainee graduates, they are qualified to take out an interest free micro loan from Kiran to start their own business.
The different units of the Training department all create different products which are sold in the Kiran Center in town (and online). Everything made in the units are made or designed by someone of differing abilities.
Also, Kiran is amazingly sustainable. For example, the basic weaving that the MR (mentally retarded) students make in the Learn and Earn unit, are then used as a fabric for the Art and Design unit to make purses.

The fourth department, Rehabilitation, has eight different units: Orthotic Workshop, Outreach Service,  Mother's Training, Physiotherapy, Parent and Child Care Unit, Community Based Rehabilitation, Dispensary, and Hostel for Outreach.
I won't go into much detail on each of these but I do want to highlight three of them briefly.

As I mentioned above, the majority of students (and many staff members) have physical impairments. To be maximally functional, different "appliances" are needed. Because they are needed, Kiran has a workshop on site that addresses this need and provides them free of charge for everyone. At the workshop (which is staffed by professionals and Kiran trained persons) they make custom orthoses, custom protheses, custom spinal braces and jackets, hand splints, custom gaiters, shoe modifications, wheelchair repairs and modifications, and also repair any other appliances.

The main room (of two) for the Orthotic Workshop.

The second unit I want to touch on is the Physiotherapy Unit. Each student in the school (total of 240) that have a physical impairment, receive physical therapy. Depending on their need and their potential to improve, each child is given an individualized therapy schedule. There are trained and licensed physical therapists, occupational therapists and also trained assistants. One assistant in particular is deaf, and she was a student at the school and went through training with the Vocation and Skills Training department and now works with physically handicapped students.

The main Physiotherapy room. There are also other facilities: a therapeutic playground, a trampoline, a horse for therapy, and a therapeutic pool.

A third unit of the Rehabilitation Unit is the Parent and Child Care Unit (PCCU). Here there is a team of a special educator, occupational therapist, speech therapist, phycologist, and neurologist.  Each day, parents from the village and community bring in their disabled child (up to 25 years old) to the Kiran campus and the team assesses each child. They work on home-therapy plans, medical plans, and possible enrollment in the Education Department or the Vocation and Skills Training department.

The fifth and final department is the Human Resource Training Center (HRTC). One of the main themes that we noticed from all of our interviews with department heads and Sister Sangeeta (the Swiss nun who founded Kiran) was that Kiran's focus is on quality and not quantity - and after 20 years, they have now stopped expanding and only want to make their services as wonderful as possible. Because they aren't going to expand themselves, they decided to have some way to create expansion. That is what the HRTC is for. The HRTC hosts a college accredited program to train people to become special educators. The program is two years long, only accepts 25 people a year and preferences handicapped and poor applicants.

Wow, that was a lot of info, yet I feel like I only got to scratch the surface with this post.

I would like to add one last thing. A plug.
As you can imagine, running all of these programs plus so many other aspects that I didn't have room to mention (like daily lunches for all 400something members of campus, or hostel units) all requires money. I would never ordinarily ask people to give money to anything. However, I feel like I have to make an exception. If this post has intrigued you at all, please look into Kiran more on their website, ask me questions, and if you can, donate to this AMAZING NGO!