Sambalam - An Excellent Initiative by SightSavers India, supported by HCL Grant

Swagatika is not able to see, but that does not mean her world is dark. She loves going to school and meeting her friends. It is not a facility for differently-abled but a school with regular children who have been sensitized to her needs. The heart-warming interaction between students is the result of ‘The Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind or SightSavers’.

With the help of new teaching methods designed with the needs of special children in mind, they are helping many students like Swagatika to lead a normal life.

Founded in 1950 by Sir John Wilson, SightSavers have been working tirelessly in 32 countries to create a world free of avoidable blindness and equal participation of visually impaired in the society along with supporting many eye treatments across India.

Sightsavers has been running its Inclusive Education Programme in five states of India to mainstream visually impaired and blind children into the existing education system. At a power packed ceremony at the HCL campus in Delhi-NCR, Sightsavers received the HCL award of 5 Crore INR for the extensive work on Inclusive Education in Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.

With the help of the grant, Sightsavers India will be able to scale up its work for inclusive education.

According Mr. Jatin Tiwari – Senior Manager, Corporate Partnerships, There are three elements to the approach-

1.     Train teachers within the mainstream school so they are equipped well enough to work with disability.

2.     Working with the communities, school management committee and working the parents of the children with disabilities.

3.     Using ICT and instruments like laptops, tablets and digi player, a child is able to record the class studies, download all the books within the tablets.

Proposal for HCL Grant – Sambalam

As a part of the proposal, SightSavers intended to scale up their inclusive education program into 5 backwards districts of Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal benefitting over 5,000 children. Importantly, concentrating on creating more digital books that will be linked to online cloud server through which all the children with disability within the states can access the textbooks. Over 30,000 to 40,000 children will be influenced because of this intervention.

About HCL Grant

Started in 2015, the HCL Grant is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitment by HCL, through HCL Foundation, to strengthen and empower NGOs, engage with them, as well as recognize them for their path breaking work. Currently focused at rural development, the HCL Grant is awarded in three thematic categories, namely Environment, Health and Education. The Grant is designed to support breakthrough award winning projects to NGOs, that have a proven track record of evident impact, high credibility and distinct ability to deliver. NGOs that reach out to marginalized, isolated, underserved and underdeveloped rural communities in India, and work jointly to achieve sustainable socio-economic development.

HCL Grant awards the winning NGOs in each of the categories of Education, Health and Environment INR 5 crore for a 5 years project.

ImpaX is 'Stories of change' in social and development sector. This section brings to you a few selected interventions or stories of change-makers that have led to sustainable and positive impacts. If you know a person or organization that could be on 'ImpaX', please write to us at csr@ngobox.org