My undergoing short-term course at Able Disable All People Together (ADAPT), Mumbai is starting to change my perspective on a wide range of matters/issues that we often take for granted or ignorant about. The fourteen-week course is reinforcing me to examine rights and opportunities that we as a member of society negate, consciously or unconsciously to differently abled people.
The course is educationally rigorous with daily visiting lecturers, Professors, doctors and educationists who are or have been working for the rights and equality of challenged children, adults and old people for decades. Apart from classroom lectures, visits to special education centres like National Association for Blind (NAB), an educational and vocational training centre for children and adults with sight impairment, and a school for Children with Autism. Additionally, we are also being taught to create things out of waste like teaching aids using waste products such as matchboxes, bottle caps, ice cream sticks and bottles. At ADAPT, I learnt to see things beyond the surface. We were taught that physical disabilities like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome are easy to discern while there are some which aren’t. As such, powerful lectures on moral etiquette towards people with disabilities or towards anyone for that matter were inculcated as part of the short-term curriculum. We were taught never to touch a person on wheelchair unnecessarily, never to call a person(s) with hearing impairment by pointing at them or poking fun and the importance of early vaccination and nutritious diet for a healthy life.
Since the start of the course in early January this year, the lectures, field trips, and e
xtracurricular engagements thus far at ADAPT are enlightening me to be more sensitive, contemplative and compassionate. I look forward to learning more from the rest of the course duration. After completion of the three-month course in March, I am mandated to incorporate my learnings in a special school with a proposed action plan and I am already looking forward to implementing what I have and will learn at ADAPT