Project Coordinator Shilpi Minocha Visits Manovikas, Delhi
Excerpts from her Letter
I visited Manovikas Project on Monday, November 20, 2006. It was an emotionally mixed kind of experience for me. When I compared the current roster to the one from last year, I discovered that we had lost a boy named Sunny. He developed chickenpox and unfortunately died from complications of the disease. Though the children still feel the loss, they are progressing well. As a part of our new nutrition program, the children were all enjoying a nutritious meal of milk, and bananas with an optional hardboiled egg.
I interviewed 6 children and learned about their daily activities. They told me what they liked about Manovikas and shared some of their individual accomplishments with me. I also met the new Occupational Therapist and understood the approach he wants to take to improve mobility in some of these severely handicapped children.
I had earlier asked the administration to track each child via individual performance charts. I was very pleased to see that this plan had been implemented.
Manovikas also cares for older individuals and has designed special vocational skill development programs for them. During my visit I was able to see several of them making hand crafted envelopes. They were anxious to show me how well they could accomplish the task. Younger children were doing their best to write alphabet letters and numerals. Some 11-12 year olds were performing at Kindergarten level, but are nonetheless, in the pipeline to go to an inclusion (public) school.
Above all, the most memorable event of my visit was seeing Manuj, a 17 year-old victim of cerebral palsy at a computer desk. Although he was drooling and did not have much coordination, his keyboarding skills blew me away! He was doing all the data entry work for Manovikas.
Making a difference··· one child at a time
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