Project on Disabilities

A. Promoting Rights of PWDs through Community Based Rehabilitation Approach:

This Project has been implementing in Rupaichhari block of south Tripura district under direct supervision and guidance from CBR Forum, Bangalore with financial support from Light for the World through Caritas India.
The projects provides covered the area of health,education,livelihood,social and advocacy-empowerment. The statistical data of the PWDs under the services of this project:-

Sl. No.	Type of Disability	0-5		6-14		15-18		19-59		60+		Total
		M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F
1	Blindness	0	0	3	2	3	0	23	15	1	8	30	25
2	Low vision	0	0	4	2	3	3	31	17	7	8	45	30
3	Leprosy cured	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	1	0	3	1
4	Hearing impairment	0	0	6	0	4	3	35	32	7	6	52	41
5	Locomotor disability	0	0	24	10	8	11	84	49	15	6	131	76
6	Mental illness	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	2	0	1	6	3
7	Mental retardation	0	0	5	3	4	3	14	13	0	0	23	19
8	Autism	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	Cerebral palsy	0	0	3	2	2	2	2	0	0	0	7	4
10	Multiple disabiities	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	3
11	Epilepsy	0	0	1	2	1	0	1	0	0	0	3	2
	Total	0	1	46	21	25	22	198	131	31	29	300	204

Case Study

Manindra Tripura / 56 years /Male, a resident of East Sabroom panchayat under Rupaichari R.D.Block of South Tripura District has mental retardation. He was not interacting with other person and used to spent his time with his own thoughts and hardly went out from the house. He lost his wife a few years ago. He has a son and a daughter who are attending the local school. Economically he was very poor without any regular income. CBR Project motivated him to be a member of DPO. Gradually he stated interaction with fellow DPO members. He came to know about various welfare s schemes of the government in the panchayat level. He participated in the Gram Sabha of the local panchayat and demanded one house under IYA. First time he failed, 2nd time he got the house. Manindra has certificate of MR with 20% disability, for this reason, it was difficult for him to get disability pension. He had undergone Income Generation training on goat and pig rearing and got loan from CBR Project. He started rearing pigs and goats. He received the job card for MGNREGA and getting wages accordingly. Manindra and his children are now happy and grateful to CBR Project. They deeply feel that due to the intervention of CBR Project Manindra could break the silence and became active in life.

B. VHAT Eye Hospital:

VHAT Eye Hospital was initiated in 2002 in collaboration with DBCS, West Tripura District and CBM,India. In the year 2003, the project was shifted to its own building in West Bhubanbon village, near Agartala airport.
Objective of the project:Prevention of blindness among elderly rural population of Tripura through cataract surgery and eye care services.
Target group:Poor underprivileged elderly population of rural Tripura. Area of coverage for Eye Hospital was whole of the West Tripura, less accessible rural areas of Gomati and South Districts.

Activities of VHAT Eye Hospital:

• Medical / eye screening camps – average 70-80 camps organize in different rural areas of West,
• Gomati of South district of Tripura in a year.
• OPD service in hospital OPD
• Cataract surgery- 500-800 surgery per year
• Distribution / prescription of spectacles in the screening camps
• Minor eye surgery
• School Eye screening camps for awareness generation, treatment & referring the eligible cases
• Vitamin A distribution

C. Strategy for Innovative and Inclusive Education in North East India (RSIIENEI) for Children with Disabilities:

In short this project is called as ‘Inclusive Education’ project which was initiated in January 2016, in North Eastern States with financial and technical support from three agencies, viz.Light for the World, Austria, CBM-India and Jan Vikas Samiti, India. VHAT is the implementing partner of CBM. Selected project areas for VHAT– Mohanpur, Dukli & Bishalgarh block.
Here Inclusion denotes that a student with a disability unconditionally belongs to and has full membership of a regular classroom in a regular school and in the community. Inclusion something is-

• Being part of things : Not being excluded.
• Focusing on similarities between disabled and non-disabled children (rather than differences).
• Acceptance of children with differences.
• Providing regular (normalized) experiences with peers of the same chronological age.
• Being close to non-disabled age peers to learn from them.Having same privileges as others. Being treated with respect.
• Providing an opportunity for children with disabilities to learn to live with their disability in everyday society.
• Not being labeled unnecessarily, and never in a devaluing fashion.
• Meeting individual differences over a wide range of variance.
• Providing for the disabled child’s educational requirements on the basis of that child’s skills and needs.

VHAT’s role in this project is basically doing the advocacy. The training of the selected teachers is to be provided by Montfort Tripura.

D. Resource and Rehabilitation Centre for PWDs:

Voluntary Health Association of Tripura has opened the centre at Purba Gakulnagar under Bishalgarh Subdivision of Sepahizala District in April, 2016. The centre was well equipped with the physiotherapy instruments for treatment of the persons with physical impairment. Initially, Mobility India supported the instruments and trained one VHAT employee for one year in their training centre at Bangalore. The CBR for PWD workers have surveyed the whole district to find out the physically disabled persons and already linked many of the PWDs with the centre who regularly received the treatment from the rehabilitation centre. capacity building