In our busy lives where our abilities are taken for granted, we forget that living along with us are challenged people who have special needs. Who could better understand the needs of the visually challenged than someone who has suffered it herself? Madhu Singhal is visually impaired by birth. Born into an upper middle class family in Haryana, Madhu had the affluence to lead a comfortable life. But she chose not to be laid back and wanted to do something on her own.

After completing her MA in Hindustani Classical Vocal Music, Madhu came down to Bangalore to undergo specialized training in communication and counseling. To her surprise and much difficulty, she found that there was very little support for her learning needs. In the North, audio recordings of text books were made available for students like her, but here in Bangalore Madhu couldn’t find any such help. Fighting this difficulty she completed her studies and got out only to find that it was extremely difficult for her to get a job. This is when Madhu decided that no one else should suffer what she suffered. And Mitra Jyothi was conceived.

Mitra Jyothi is aimed at empowering the visually impaired by supporting their educational needs, finding suitable jobs and making them independent enough to take charge of their lives. The organization’s most popular initiative is its Talking Book Library. Text books and books for general reading are given a voice by volunteers, and cassettes and CDs are recorded for circulation. Over 22,000 cassettes of more than 2000 books have been recorded till date. Mitra Jyothi set up its own recording studio to provide this service professionally. Notably, Mitra Jyothi’s effort in this front was the first of its kind in Karnataka and over 5000 people have benefited from the library.

The organization is also extensively involved in Braille transcription and providing computer education to the visually impaired. Mitra Jyothi runs a full-fledged job placement cell for its members, a service that has helped its members find suitable jobs in corporates and manufacturing units. Another admirable service is that the organization runs special courses for women to impart independent living skills.

Mitra Jyothi has been serving the needs of the visually challenged for over two decades now. It has extended its services to Kerala, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. Madhu Singhal has nurtured the organization with her selfless commitment that grew beyond her impairments.  Madhu lives independent, travels abroad on her own, spearheads an organization and chairs important positions in various social service organizations – a true role model. What she has achieved can be made possible for more visually challenged people. Help spread the cause.

Visit http://www.mitrajyothi.org/

Sittilingi is a remote village in Dharmapuri district, 125 km away from Salem town in Tamil Nadu, which used to be a god forsaken land caught under the spell of quacks and black magic. Noisy drums and fake injections were all they had to cure illnesses. This is when Dr. Regi and Dr. Lalitha took the plunge. This doctor couple went ahead to provide medical services to the tribals of Sittilingi, leaving their promising careers in the cities.

The couple found their calling in service to the underprivileged and wanted to use their knowledge where it was needed the most. Their hunt for the right place to offer their service ended at Sittilingi, a totally neglected and ignored tribal village. They ventured into the village, faced tough resistances and now they have emerged successful in establishing a full-fledged medical center for the tribals. A service beyond praises! 

Regi and Lalitha called their service the Tribal Health Initiative (THI). Their perseverance and continued service has brought about dramatic change in the living conditions of the natives. Infant mortality rate in Sittilingi has reduced to 20/1000 and there are no mothers dying in childbirth for the past 5 years. The nutrition levels of children and the general well being of the people have improved to a great extent.

Another striking fact about the Sittilingi initiative is that the girls who serve as nurses at the medical center are personally trained by Regi and Lalitha. When Regi and Lalitha saw that it was extremely difficult to get nurses to work at this tribal village, they decided to go choose smart and trainable girls from the village. This became such a wonderful uplift to the self esteem of the girls that they are extremely proud to be part of this initiative and to serve their community.

THI’s approach to medical care went one step ahead in educating the people and ‘helping the tribals help themselves’. They wanted to create a general understanding about health and health issues and make the natives acquainted with basic first aid. Today, over 21 neighbouring villages are benefiting from the Tribal Health Initiative that sprung at Sittilingi.  

And, the couple didn’t stop with medical facilities. They organize educational programmes, cultural activities and community development initiatives. There is a library facility that is available for children who also get to listen to motivating stories from a community worker every month.  Truly commendable, right?

It is very heartening to know about the selfless and committed service of Regi and Lalitha and many others who are supporting them. You can visit them at Sittilingi and get to know their service better. We also encourage you to support the initiative by contributing to the cause. Visit http://www.tribalhealth.org/

The Divya Chaya Trust (DCT) was established in 1984 mainly to help destitute children and women. Their main aim was to support educational and vocational activities at schools in rural areas and encourage educating the orphans and school drop outs.

Their work is significantly differently as they impart career counseling and provide students with opportunities for further studies. The trust holds confidence building therapies in order to enable women to support themselves financially.

Divya Chaya Trust is located at various states across the northern part of India including West Bengal, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and is currently working with various child care homes and ashrams. These include the SD Jain Mahila Ashram and Arya Bal Griha at Delhi, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission situated in West Bengal and Delhi.

The trust has around 49 employees who work full time for the establishment and betterment of their reach. Apart from the above, there are approximately 50 volunteers who are working for the same mission.

Their remarkable achievement for the year 2007-2008 is that they have sponsored educational expenses for 500 children. They also had organized seven career counseling sessions for more than 150 children who had graduated and were looking out for jobs.

Their contribution towards the growth of special children with various disabilities is also outstanding. Although the government claims that of the total disabled population only 2% are educated and very few are employed, the DCT is doing their best overcome these figures and make them more presentable for the country. To achieve the same, the trust has various services which are solely for the disabled. They have a range of options to reach the disabled, which include financial aids, or even providing them with simple basic necessities like a hearing aid, a wheel chair or even a Braille kit. A contribution from our end towards supplying these necessities would definitely be of immense support to them.

The most disappointing fact, however, remains that their total income is severely lower than their expenditure. The trust did loose a significant amount which could have been well avoided, had there been enough contribution made towards the trust from citizens.
Despite this, the trust did not loose hope and has recently built a residential home for the elderly at Haryana.

It is truly incredible to know that citizens of our country are going beyond their reach to dissolve the bridge between the privileged and under privileged by ensuring that primary education and fundamental living necessities are being provided to significant section of people.

Read more about Divya Chandra Trust here: http://www.divyachayatrust.org.in/

NGO write up done by guest reporter Jheel Parekh.

In a previous post Meeting the World Challenge, we had mentioned about She Hope Society and the remarkable work they were doing in rehabilitating the disabled in the Kashmir Valley. In response to that article, we received a note from Diane Emerson who was headed to the Centre to volunteer for a period of 3 months starting in April. Hailing from New Zealand and having traveled all over the world volunteering with various charities and NGOs, Diane expressed a strong interest in sharing her experience with The Better India, so that our readers could get a glimpse of working in an NGO, the ground realities in Kashmir as seen from the eyes of an impartial observer, and life as a traveling volunteer. Here are some of her observations.

About life in Kashmir Valley:

The food is healthy and locally grown and organic. And vegetarianism is common. Even people who do eat meat eat it sparingly.

Children are loved by both parents, and get lots of attention since everyone eats on the floor. I often see fathers walking with their little boys, and their girls. And feeding their children. Caring for children is clearly shared, because they are loved. And there is time for them.

Drunk drivers do not exist here. Alcohol is not sold anywhere. So there is no alcohol-related violence, no party culture. No drunken hooning on the roads at night, no drunks stumbling along the streets, or passed out in the gutter, or making lewd comments to the girls. No bars to go to. No alcoholic fathers making life miserable for their families. No hidden alcoholic mothers. None. So what do people do without alcohol?

People talk to each other. They hang out together, and just spend time together, rather than sit at home and watch TV, or go out to the bars. In the evenings, when so many New Zealanders and Americans are in front of their TV watching the news and getting a big dose of negativity and violence, here they talk to their neighbours and watch the light fade.

About working at the Hope Disability Centre:

Today is a CBR: Community Based Rehabilitation visit. Sami brings hearing testing equipment and we go to a village to find disabled people who need help. The village was Kulharna, and it had been arranged by the newspaper reporter who had stopped by a week before. Our first stop was at a school where there were two disabled teenage boys. The school superintendent asked me my opinion of Kashmir, and was pleased with my answers. Yes. I like it here. For many reasons. And I am finding more all the time. When funds become available, these boys will have surgery. In the meantime, exercises can be done to help.

About the work of the military in the region, and of one commendable army man:

Even though in most of Kashmir the actual voting turnout is only 3 or 4%, here in our Ganderbal district the voting turnout is closer to 60%. I found out one of the reasons why on Friday, when Sami and I visited the top military commander in Ganderbal. Commandant Vivik Sharma believes strongly in eliminating militancy, not just militants. I have learned that in Kashmir the independence fighters are called militants by some; terrorists by others. Commandant Sharma’s job is only to find and stop the militants. But he does more. Much more. He organizes free cataract surgeries, field trips to Delhi for school children, free veterinary training for the small farmers, and locates funds to support efforts like the Hope Disability Centre. He will be reassigned soon. And I think he has chosen to build a cricket stadium in Ganderbal as his lasting contribution to the community. It will be finished next month. But he is most proud of the fact that not one of his soldiers has troubled any of the students at the all girls school right next door. Not once in 3 years.

The Commandant General even requires his men to treat suspected militants with respect and consideration. There was a photo of a militant giving himself up in the room we were sitting in. The military found and took in this Pakistani militant who had come to Kashmir to help liberate the country, and asked him why he had chosen the militant path. The Pakistani said he had heard that Muslims were not allowed to worship at the mosques, and other offenses. So the commandant took him around Ganderbal and showed him the open mosques, and allowed him to talk to the local people about life in Ganderbal District. And the man, who had not killed anyone, ended up joining the army. If all the miliary commanders around the world were like this man, there would be no need for militaries at all.

Diane also brought with her a couple of laptops from New Zealand to train the disabled youth and help them attain life skills to be able to support themselves. The program has met with tremendous popularity and Diane is flooded with more students than she can handle, so that some of the older students also take up the responsibility of teaching the newer entrants.

Follow Diane’s intriguing journey with Hope Disability Centre and her experiences in India at her blog.

His name is Raja, but he is more popularly known as “Auto Raja”. Once a youth given to gambling, drinking and even stealing money from his home, Raja left home when he was 15, and experienced first hand the hardships of living on the streets. Sleeping on the roads and eating from dustbins on the streets of Bangalore taught him about the realities of life. Now, at 41, he has rescued over 3000 people from the rough streets over the past 12 years, and offers them hope and rehabilitation at his New Ark Mission of India, also called the Home of Hope.

Auto Raja, as the name suggests, took to driving an auto rickshaw to earn a living. However, as he plied his way around the city, he was struck by the sufferings of the homeless on the streets. Though he had meager means of income himself, he was so moved by the plight of these people that he had to give in and start helping them. Madhumitha B writes more in Deccan Herald about the inspiration behind this man and his mission:

Most people feel the need to help the underprivileged but it’s always only a select few who go the entire mile. For Raja, it was a constant struggle with his conscience until he gave in one day to help a person on the street and from then on, he gradually set up a place they can call home. “I began to realise that this was my calling. I felt a sense of satisfaction, an inner bliss everytime I helped someone. It was very difficult but I strongly believe that if you help the poor, God will help you and that keeps me going,” says Raja.

It doesn’t stop with providing a place to stay. Raja also provides three wholesome meals a day, medical care as well as round-the-clock presence. “While the men and women have separate areas to stay, I have moved in here along with my immediate family where we stay together with the children we have sheltered,” he says. In return, daddy as he is referred to by all of them, is blessed with lots of love and affection. This, he says, is a reward in itself.

Surviving mainly on charity and grants, the home is housing 300 inmates at present, with a capacity for only a 100. With limited help, Raja has still been managing to provide food, clothes and medical help to his inmates. The home has about 15 staff members, some of whom are senior inmates. What about the inmates themselves? ThaIndian News reports in this feature:

The oldest inmate of the home is Tatha, a 101-year-old man, who is fondly called “anna” – meaning elder brother in the Kannada language – by other inmates and staff.
“I am almost blind and had been roaming the city’s roads without food for days. I was rescued from the streets by Raja’s team members almost a year back and since then I have been staying here. I am lucky to get a home, many are still suffering and dying on the streets,” said Tatha.
The youngest inmate is a one-year-old girl who is yet to be named. She was rescued by the team almost a year ago.
“We rescued her as a newborn from a garbage bin in the city. She is cute and we will celebrate her birthday Jan 30, the day she was brought to the home. We will also name her on that day,” smiled Padma, a staff member.
Some inmates trained in various vocations at the home are now leading independent lives. Around 1,000 destitutes have died in dignity in the home in the last 12 years.

While the going is tough for this Home of Hope, we do hope that “Auto Raja” goes a long way in his noble cause and receives greater support from various individuals and organizations along the route.

Read more about this personality and his work in Deccan Herald and ThaIndian News.

Image Courtesy: www.newarkmission.org

When you think of eye care and restoration of sight, the first thought that comes to mind is of Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai and its founder Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. The largest single provider of eye surgery in the world, Aravind has given sight to more than a million people in India since its inception in 1976. Having perfected the art of treating cataract and other eye problems to the point where any further improvements would necessitate a revolution in the field, the hospital and its team of dedicated surgeons and staff has achieved unimaginable economies of scale. A cataract operation that would cost $1,650 to perform in the US takes them about $10. Harriet Rubin has profiled the life and work of ‘Dr. V’ beautifully in his article published in FastCompany, from which here are a few excerpts:

How do you achieve perfection in the never-perfect and always-compromised world of business? It helps to have a service that you can’t sell. That way, you have to give it away. Your toughest customers are always the people who don’t need you. Many of Aravind’s patients can’t afford cataract surgery. Most don’t remember what good vision is — and don’t understand why it would offer any benefit. So Aravind has to keep educating them — and perfecting its own service.

On a slow day, Aravind treats 400 patients. Offering free services to all who need it, with absolutely no criteria for availing for free service, the hospital still manages a gross margin of 40%. This is despite the fact that almost 70% of its patients paying nothing, and it does not depend on donations or government grants. It has been achieved by constantly cutting costs, increasing efficiency, innovating and building a market. Most of Aravind’s potential beneficiaries are not even aware of such a service or their need for it.

“In the third world, a blind person is referred to as ‘a mouth without hands,’ ” says Dr. V. “He is detrimental to his family and to the whole village. But all he needs is a 10-minute operation. One week the bandages go on, the next week they go off. High bang for the buck. But people don’t realize that the surgery is available, or that they can afford it because it’s free. We have to sell them first on the need.”

Aravind has managed to beat costs in every area of its service: The hospital’s own Aurolab, begun in 1992, pioneered the production of high-quality, low-cost intraocular lenses. Aurolab now produces 700,000 lenses per year, a quarter of which are used at Aravind. The rest are exported to countries all over the world — except to the United States. (In order for Aravind to get its lenses approved for sale in the United States, it would have to pay for an FDA study and a clinical study, which the hospital cannot afford.) Aravind even has its own guest house, and students and physicians from around the world come to teach, study, observe, practice — and boost their training. Poles for stretchers? They’re made from bamboo that grows in Dr. V.’s garden. “We also have the $5 pole, which is bright and shiny,” says Dr. Natchiar, “but we prefer these bamboo poles.”

How many people knew that Dr V had studied to become an obstetrician but a crippling rheumatoid arthritis forced him to take an alternative path. If anything confirms the saying that ‘everything happens for the best’, this would be it. Rubin talks about the passion and leadership qualities of the humble man who has been inspired by Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, but set his own standards.

You know he knows. He’s an eye surgeon — a man of vision. He has learned how to deliver perfection, and to do it despite crippling obstacles. As a young man, a brand-new obstetrician, he contracted rheumatoid arthritis and watched helplessly as his fingers slowly twisted, fused, and grew useless for delivering babies. So he started over, this time studying ophthalmology. He managed to design his own instruments to suit his hands, and these tools enabled him to do as many as 100 surgeries a day. He became the most admired cataract surgeon in India.

Twenty-five years later, he confronted another potentially crippling obstacle: retirement. In 1976, facing the prospect of social shelving at age 57, he opened a 12-bed eye hospital in his brother’s home in Madurai, India. Today, he runs five hospitals that perform more than 180,000 operations each year. Seventy percent of his patients are charity cases; the remaining 30% seek him out and pay for his services because the quality of his work is world-class. He is a doctor to the eyes and a leader to the soul.

Tossing all market intelligence to the wind, Aravind Eye Hospital has managed to create a huge demand by the quality of its service and the education its customers. This is one of the lessons that Rubin takes away from Aravind:

Give people a new experience, one that deeply changes their lives, make it affordable, and eventually you change the whole world. And your customers become your marketers.

In the end, to get more insight into the ideals of a great man, read Dr. V’s response to Rubin’s question:

I ask Dr. V. a simple question designed to get him to talk about his unique vision: “What are your gifts?” I ask him. Dr. V. replies, “People thank me for giving them sight.” This is no error of translation, no slipup of English. Dr. V. considers his gifts to be the things that he has given others, not what he possesses.

There are many lessons to be learnt from this single man and his shared vision.

Find the rest of the must-read article here.
Image Courtesy: World People’s Blog

We at The Better India are pleased to announce a partnership with GiveIndia to help our readers make a difference in the lives of people in need.

What is GiveIndia?

GiveIndia (www.giveindia.org) is a NGO that works as a fundraising intermediary, connecting donors from all over the world with NGOs in India that need funds. GiveIndia’s role in this chain is to add value and transparency and credibility to the entire process through a number of ways.

How GiveIndia Works:

Firstly, GiveIndia has done due diligence on each of the NGOs it works with, ensuring that they meet the Credibility Alliance norms which mean they operate with high levels of transparency.

Then, GiveIndia lets the donor choose exactly how they want their money to be used by offering a variety of causes, NGOs and projects that help the poorest of the poor. So a donor can pick between over 400 “donation options” that range from providing a cataract surgery to education a child to training youth in livelihood skills to offering micro-credit to a rural woman. GiveIndia wants donors to be empowered to make their own choice of a cause that is dear to their heart.

Within 6-8 months of making a donation, a donor receives a feedback report with the details of their beneficiary and how they helped change a life. These feedback reports are individualised for each donor and take time and effort to generate but GiveIndia feels that until donors in India develop a much higher level of trust in NGOs, such reports help build confidence.

GiveIndia targets mostly retails donors as part of their mission of creating a giving culture in India. Currently GiveIndia raise funds through a website, http://www.giveindia.org where in the FY08 close to Rs2 crore was raised.

GiveIndia’s other main focus is the Payroll Giving Program where 25,000 professionals from the leading companies of India such as ICICI Bank, Genpact, Star TV and HDFC donate a sum of their choice from their salaries every month. Currently, these contributions total Rs50 lac per month and GiveIndia has ambitious plans to scale up this program.

Interestingly, GiveIndia is able to all this at a cost of fundraising that is below 10% against industry averages of 30 – 40%. GiveIndia is able to keep costs relatively low, thanks to a highly committed team of staff that works at a fraction of their “market rates”, a large band of very dedicated volunteers, zero outlay on Board members and the deep belief in the need to be as “thin” an organisation as possible.

The Beginning:

GiveIndia was started in the year 2000 by Venkat Krishnan, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus who started his career in the corporate sector but decided to pursue something more meaningful. It is a registered non-profit in India and offers tax benefits to Indian as well as US and UK taxpayers. This makes it the preferred choice of many NRIs.

Testimonials:

One of GiveIndia’s NRI donors, Mr S Khanna explains why he donates through GiveIndia. “ I used to always wonder how I could make a difference. Earlier I had to rely on friends and relatives to make donations. But they had to find time and do me a favour. The other option was to wait until I come home for vacation. Going to India on vacation used to be so hectic. Then I found GiveIndia’s banner on the ICICI site. I have been a regular donor through your site and have been impressed by the way you have grown to provide a link between the donor and the NGOs.”

In Conclusion:

GiveIndia is a “one stop shop” for donating towards poverty alleviation in India. GiveIndia is quick to respond during disasters and has helped to raise funds for the Bhuj earthquake, the tsunami, the Bihar floods. Currently they are helping NGOs raise funds for the victims of the terror attacks in Mumbai as well as those affected by Cyclone Nisha that has devastated parts of Tamil Nadu.

With donation options starting as low as Rs500, India’s growing Internet user base finally has a trustworthy channel through which they can contribute towards the developemnt of our country. 

The Better India and GiveIndia Partnership:

The Better India has partnered with GiveIndia to help you make a difference in the lives of people in need.

Click here to visit the GiveIndia-TBI site where you can make a secure online donation and receive a feedback report (within a few months) of exactly how you helped change a life.

This article is about a unique initiative called the Clothes Bank. Many people just throw their old clothes away. Old pair of jeans which one no longer fits in, an ancient sweater with some wool pulled off, a ragged t-shirt and all such clothing we abandon and move up to the latest fashion. You might want to donate, but the problem is how to find people who need such clothes?

To solve this, a Guwahati based NGO called Xavier’s Foundation has founded a unique Clothes Bank in association with the North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Limited (NEDFi).

The basic objective of this bank is simple – it collects clothes from people who no longer need them, and distributes these clothes to the poor and the needy. Its a brilliant idea and leaves one wondering as to why such an idea was not already implemented.

The Telegraph reports in this article:

“Our basic idea is to collect old clothes that can be still be used and make those available to the needy free of cost through different NGOs and other organisations which are working for the uplift of the poor and underprivileged,” Xavier’s Foundation president Pranab Jyoti Neog said. The idea is his brainchild.

For the donors:

He said the clothes bank would be good for donors as well because while disposing their old clothes they would be doing charity by ensuring that these clothes reach the needy and poor people free of cost.

If you live in Guwahati or nearby the city, you can donate your clothes at the office of the NEDFi which is house number 8 on Rajgarh Main Road. You can also call them at their office on +91-036-2529 202-06. (Contact number obtained from NEDFi website)

If we have numerous such clothes bank in our country, it would be a great help in cases of natural disasters (floods, earth quakes etc) since it would be easy to mobilize clothing to the affected people. In fact, why just a clothes bank we ask. We could also have an essential commodities bank wherein people can donate things like utensils, furniture, footwear etc. These banks could then take on the responsibility of distributing it to the needy. 

The Clothes Bank set up by NEFDi is a simple yet impactful idea and we hope this serves as an inspiration to many of us to take up such initiatives.

Read the complete Telegraph article.
Image courtesy: lime.com

14,000 employees. 40 locations across India. 23,375 hours of community service clocked. This has been the success story of Sankalp – the employee self actualization program at Hindustan Unilever Ltd. In order to mark 75 years of its existence in India, the company decided to devote 1 hour for each day of the 75 years in October 2007. One year later it has surpassed that goal.

HUL Sankalp is a program that allows the employee to register and get associated to a cause or NGO. The back-end support was provided by indianngos.com which was responsible for checking the authenticity of its partner NGOs and for tracking the employee’s commitment. Sapna Agarwal reports in Business Standard:

The programme has now gone beyond the cities to touch lives of people in the rural districts like that of Wad/ Jawahar. Here HUL Mumbai employees travelled 130 km to create awareness on hand wash and hygiene. Similarly, employees have also started involving their family members.

Nair added: “An employee, Crystelle Ellis along with her family clocked over 600 hours of voluntary service at the Little Sisters of the Poor, an old age home in Kolkata. Their activities included cooking, cleaning, serving, washing, helping the invalid to groom themselves and move about apart from helping with office work.”

Such initiatives reconfirm the belief that every person has an innate desire to do good and to give back to the society. They just need the right platform and the initial push. After this, in all probability, they will surprise themselves.

Read the complete article here.

About DEEDS:
DEEDS is a Charity for the Hearing Impaired. It is an acronym that stands for Development Education Empowerment for the Disadvantaged in Society.

Their Vision:
‘To Enrich & Touch the lives of at least 10,000 deaf persons  by the end of this decade’. In pursuance of this Vision, so as to make the deaf financially Self Reliant & Contributors in main stream Society’.
 

Key Areas of Focus:
 - Free Education for the deaf
- Free Vocational Training for the deaf
- Ensuring Job Placements

Ongoing Projects: 

They have 11 ongoing projects in Mumbai ,Vadodara , Noida and Dehradun.  
Some of their projects are as follows:

• Noida Deaf Society – Noida (Computer centre providing Basic & Advanced Computer knowledge)
• DEEDS Ishara Initiative – Mumbai (Teaching English Literacy with the help of Sign Language)
• The Bajaj Institute of Learning – Dehradun (Provides education from KG to XIIth totally free
• DEEDS Catering Institute – Mumbai (Provides a one-year full-time diploma with stipend in catering certified by Maharashtra State Vocation Board)
• DEEDS LTMG Tailoring Project- Mumbai. It provides free training in the tailoring vocation.
• DEEDS Computer Center at Sanskardham at Goregaon. It imparts basic and advanced skills in computers.
• DEEDS Computer Center at Samvad Karnabadhir Prabodhini at Dombivali. It imparts basic and advanced skills in computer.
• DEEDS  Computer Rooms in  schools like Rochiram Thadani School for the Hearing Handicapped, Chembur and Pragati Vidyalaya for the deaf, Dadar.
• DEEDS also provide material support to 27 schools for the deaf in Mumbai as per requirements.

Achievements:

Their success rate in placements also has been considerable.  They have placed over 400 candidates in various fields like banking, hospitality, catering, house-keeping, traffic attendents at petrol pumps, Brew Masters, Jewellery-making, diamond sorting, clerical jobs and back office processes. They are constantly striving to improve our ties with the various sectors of industry to identify lucrative opportunities for their candidates. 

Upcoming Events:
DEEDS is conducting a fund raising event on the 22nd October in Mumbai. It is a hilarious play with a comic twist, adapted and directed by Shubha Khote. Click here to know more about the event.

Stay tuned for volunteering opportunities with DEEDS.

Contact DEEDS at:
Development, Education, Empowerment of the Disadvantaged in Society
8 Bajaj Arcade,
31, Union Park, Khar(W),
Mumbai 400 052. India.
Tel: +91-22-26005083/84.
Email: humanity@deeds-india.com

Read more about DEEDS and their work at their website: http://www.deeds-india.com/