HYDERABAD: Tearing down the walls of exclusion and making education more accessible, the founder of Ashray Akruti, DPK Babu began his journey 26 years ago, out of the necessity to bring the world a little closer to his younger brother who had a hearing impairment. Talking about his humble beginnings, Babu says, “My family has seen a lot of pain in ensuring that this boy gets a proper education and employment opportunities and other support that he wanted. It all started in the year 1996, very humbly. There were a lot of challenges those days.
Not many special educators were available, and resources and monetary support from the community or donors was also very little” Ashray Akruti was started as an intervention for children with hearing impairments but now the organisation caters to multiple disabilities including autism, cerebral palsy, locomotive disabilities, ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) and learning disabilities. What started as one school for children with hearing impairments, has now expanded into an institution catering to more than 700 children studying in their multiple schools and centres.
“I thought there must be a different approach that should be adopted for children with hearing impairment,” said Babu. The basic impetus to expand his work in the domain of inclusive education and beyond, came through greater struggle, “When my brother got married, his son again had a hearing loss. So that is when I decided that I should work beyond education. Luckily, we could get a cochlear implant for the child but I realised there are a lot of children who cannot avail a cochlear implant or a hearing aid. Many cannot even get them tested to be able to identify it at an early age,” said Babu.
That is when he decided to come up with a holistic organisation, catering to different disabilities. “We have mobile hearing clinics, ability training centres, speech therapy centres, preschools, early intervention centres; we are going to doorsteps of people and even to government schools. We support them with hearing aids. We provide cochlear implants for children, that too, expensive ones, free of cost. We have a number of special educators, psychologists, speech therapists, physiotherapists and counsellors working with us. We are touching upon every aspect of a child’s development like education and skill development,” said Babu.
According to Babu, the purpose of education must not be only learning skills to be able to adapt to the environment, but certain interventions should be made in a manner that the child is able to find jobs when he grows up. The purpose of inclusive education, according to him, is to make children self dependent.
“We adopted two government schools for children with hearing impairments. We provide them with resources. We support them with the help of corporations. We also support children from disadvantaged backgrounds in the suburban areas of Hyderabad. We don’t send them to special schools but provide them with the support they need to be able to study in a mainstream school with their siblings, community. This is how we function on an inclusive model of education,” he said.
The organisation has come up with a pan-India project to help children with disabilities. The project was started during the pandemic. “If a child is studying in a reputed institution, they’re able to get some support, in terms of proper academic study. However, there are a lot of children who were not identified early and depend only on gestures or sign language.
There are no appropriate tools available for them. So keeping that in view, we have come up with accessible content for the hearing impaired. These e-learning modules are based on the state syllabi and are interpreted in sign language, with a lot of graphics and animation. This content is available at free of cost and has been put up on YouTube for them to see,” Babu explained. The project, which covers Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, will soon reach other states of the country as well, mentioned Babu.