ASHA Internship Program

ASHA or Accredited Social Health Activist acts as an interface between the community and the Public Health System. An ASHA comes from within the community and hence her understanding and reach amongst the people can rarely be matched. According to estimates each ASHA is responsible for a thousand people.

Being in this position, her role in developing awareness for health services is critical and it is essential that she understands “disability”. From our past interactions with them we learnt that unfortunately, disability and its related issues had not been included in the training imparted to them. This was the reason the Latika Roy Foundation Awareness Campaign proposed a one month internship programme for ASHA to sensitize them towards disability and to get hands on experience of dealing with children with special needs.

Early identification of a disability can be a big step in its effective treatment and an ASHA who is constantly in touch with the community can take this message across to the maximum number of people. The data that they gather can in turn be used as a base for better policies pertaining to health and well being in general and disability in particular.

During the course of the internship they will spend time at “Khushi”, our Satellite Early Intervention Centre and learn the basics in taking care of special children.

AUGUST: The Month that was....

Never known to miss out on anything fun all we need is a reason to celebrate! The month of august was full of fun filled activities across the foundation. We started the month with rakhi celebration at Latika Vihar. Days before the actual festival children were seen making rakhis during the art and craft class. Each sister made sure that Archana didi (the art teacher) helped in making rakhis that adhered to her beloved brother’s taste. Finally the day arrived, the puja thali was ready and each sister took the rakhi she had made for her brother and tied it on his wrist. In return the brother gave her sweets and a promise to love and protect her all his life.

Rakhi done and over with we got down to preparing for the next festivals in line, Independence Day and Janamashtami. At Khushi the children had been asked to dress up as Radha and Krishna.

The children looked absolutely adorable in their colourful costumes. After finishing with their regular activities they spend the rest of the day dancing to their favourite songs.

The day before Janamashtami the children at Latika Vihar along with the bamboo weaving and pottery teacher made a beautiful pandal and a swinging crib where they put idols of Lord Krishna.

While some of the children were busy preparing the Prasad for their friends and the guests the others could not wait to show the guests what they had prepared. The children put up two performances, a dance on ‘Woh Krishna Hai’ and a play on Rani Laxmibai for Independence Day.

On the whole it was a fun day and all the hard work paid of.

But our celebrations did not end here! We had a lot more to celebrate. On August 15 we started the day at Karuna Vihar to celebrate our freedom and hoist our national flag. The children at Karuna Vihar had prepared a small but meaningful play. The children did a play on the importance of trees and showed how destroying them would also take away the animals right to live in their own homes. After all the freedom and right to live is not just for human beings! The CVT trainees sang a patriotic song and danced their hearts out.
Wait there is more! The Early Intervention Centre had a new home, a home that we could call our own and it was time to celebrate this new found freedom. The evening started with endearing performances by the staff and children of Khushi. ‘Ensemble’ a Dehradun based rock and roll band played foot tapping numbers and forced us to take to the dance floor.

Oh no we are still not done we had barely caught on to a few winks of sleep that it was time to start gearing up for the next event, The JRD Tata Trust Lecture Series. The lecture this year was on Sexuality and the Intellectually Disabled, a topic which is important yet ignored.

India is a country where sex is a taboo subject even among the so called ‘normal’ people, so it is no surprise when people with disabilities are completely negated in such conversations. This lecture was aimed at several varied groups.

There was a group who held misconceptions like people with disabilities are asexual, many believe since they are not ‘normal’ they have no such feelings or needs. Then there was the group of parents of children with intellectual disabilities who had specific questions that needed to be answered and finally we had the group of NGO’s who wanted to know more.

To do this mammoth task of clearing misconceptions and answering questions we invited Dr Shekhar Seshadri a child psychiatrist from NIMHANS, Bangalore.

He was everything we hoped for and more. The main cause of concern that we had was the reluctance of people to talk about sexuality. Unless they talk we would never be able to help them understand or guide them on what to do next. It was this impossible task of making people talk that Dr Seshadri accomplished. To come and give a lecture may not be too hard a feat but to make people get up and ask personal questions without inhibitions is a feat that deserves applause.

The month drew to an end but it doesn’t stop here as Robert Frost aptly said, ‘but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep’. September here we come!