Esha starts uploading on the Archive.org platform

To give a wider reach to the audio content recorded by our volunteers over a long period of time, we will gradually start uploading our original content (not partner content, just our copyright free audio content that has been recorded as part of our summer program and through our community volunteers) 

You can see our content here: 

https://archive.org/details/@esha_braille

NABCW visit by school students

One of the things we do under our sensitization vertical is to take school students to a blind school. Today, Grade 7 students from a Delhi based school ewent to N AB center for Women, Hauz Khas.

The children who entered the school were regular 12 year olds, but the children who came out were inclusive citizens. 

Here's to more such days. 

New School in the network - Aurangabad

Very happy to share this. Over the last two days - December 24th and 25th, I was at Aurangabad. The brief visit had 2 happy occasions:
1. We took the message of creating an inclusive society to over 100 young students at the MGM Institute. The students were from Class 11, and from classes 7 and 8.


I had so much fun doing this! The students were active and eager. We asked for 6 volunteers for the blind walk, and got 14, with more waiting. The learning was Braille was done with much gusto and the questions at the end were thought provoking. Thank you!


The visit to the blind school was equally good. We saw the basic and clean facilities, understood their requirements and were surprised to see the very low level of audio penetration, even though the students are working towards competitive exams.


The school is now a part of our audio library network and will share requirements.
Special thanks to MGM, and Dr. Aparna Kakkad in particular, for enabling both these interactions.

With the Grade 7 and 8 students, the principal and teachers

Talking about why inclusive spaces are necessary

With the Grade 11 students who asked some very interesting questions

This young lady asked a really interesting question - mam, how do you train them. This is her being trained on getting on stage without stumbling, and walking straight. It was very nice to see her confidence surge when she reached the stage on her own, and turned around to address the audience, all with her eyes closed!

A full house!

The hostel is in a simple, single builing

The school gate

The team after the discussion. MGM has consented to play an active role in the development of the audio library for the school

November 2018 Roundup

What a lovely November this has been!
In this month, we:
A. Conducted Read Fests at KPMG, Moodys, and SOIL (School of Inspired Leadership)
B. Did a Trust Walk with the German exchange students at The Shri Ram School, Aravali
C. Conducted Blind school visits for the Grade 7 students of The Shri Ram School, Moulasari, to the NAB Center for Women, Hauz Khas
D. Added some more Braille Cards customers, one of whom is a very prominent one.
E. We also visited the Namchi Blind School in South Sikkim to take stock of their learning needs. This is one of the remote schools from which we take requirements for our audio library. We noted the requirements for the next year and also gave them a free resource which they will use every day now - the daily newspaper for children, which is an initiative of our founder. This paper will now be shared with them every day at no cost. The school will use the in built screenreader of Adobe to read out the news to all the children in the assembly. Currently, the teachers have to make the news every morning in Braille and then the children read it out.




The audio content recorded during these Read Fests will particularly help Indian history fans (Original Kautilya Arthashastra in Hindi), and IAS aspirants (All 2018 Mains papers and Prelims papers recorded in audio)


80 files in English, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Oriya and Malayalam were recorded. These will be a part of the next release, which is due this week.


The Blind School visits almost always make us very happy, because they help us sensitise a lot of children, and the children who walk out of that school truly understand the key words that we stand for - Dignity, Empowerment, and Enablement.


On the technical front, we made the code of the mobile app - CLABIL, more robust, and are working to improve the code even further. We have heated discussions on security for the mobile app, and I love those discussions!


Here's to an equally outstanding December.

Blind walk at Good Earth City Center on 8.03.17

Good Earth City Center is one of the most happening places in Gurgaon, therefore we opt to conduct one of our Blind Walk here. Also, we invited Goibibo employees who work in the close vicinity of the venue. We conducted eight round of blind walk, engaging 51 people. Before we began with our event, we just tried to enquire upon, how good is Good Earth City Center for the people who are visually unabled. Unfortunately, we could not find much infrastructure which could be friendly to these people. With an aim to let people empathize with blindness, we conducted this blind walk.

We were glad that 51 people participated and shared their experience post the event. They also realized how we commoners are ignoring this section of society who are rarely observed in public spaces. Goibibo employees were first time experiencing an event like that, they invited their friends to experience the world without eyes. An event which started with just a blind walk turned out to be a lesson for a lifetime for almost every one of them. We took the recording of the experience of the participants which is available on our Facebook page. We just need a little empathy to make this world beautiful and accessible for everyone, including the visually unable. As a moderator of the Blind Walk, we felt that, everyone who participated have almost forgotten about those who are differently abled, but when they underwent through a similar situation as blindness they are going to remember this for a long time. We thank our NGO ESHA for enabling us to conduct Blind walk at this venue.

Blind Walk and Read Fest

Last Wednesday, we did a Blind Walk at the Good Earth Mall, Gurgaon.


Next Wednesday, we have  chartered Blind Walk for Inventcare in Gurgaon


On March 16,17, Moody's is hosting a private (open to employees only) Read Fest at its premises.


Looking forward to an eventful week ahead!

PMI North India Chapter and Rotary Club of Gurgaon

Yesterday, we spoke at the AGM of the PMI North India chapter about chapter members volunteering for Esha.




We also were a part of a Rotary Club of Gurgaon event. The club has donated 1 computer and one set of speakers to enable us to set up an audio library at a blind school.
Update on 13 march 2017: Last week, that library was set up at the Junta Blind School, Gurgaon.




Good day1

Theater Workshop, Read Fest, Media and Braille Cards stall!

Today is a very happening day at Esha.

Today we have:
1. A theater workshop at Nagarro
2. A Read Fest at The Sri Ram School, Aravali
3. A stall at the Diversity and Inclusion dialogue at The Lemon Tree Hotels, Aerocity, Delhi.
4. We got featured in the Economic Times, Delhi edition.

:) To more such days!!!


On Feb 6th, we also got featured in the Times of India, Delhi edition. In print, it was the second page center. :)

TSRS Visit to NAB Center for Women

Working with children is always super special to us. Because when we create inclusive children, we are creating an inclusive future.

Which is why, the program where we take The Sri Ram Students of Grade 7 to a blind school, is among our favorite programs. 30 students enter that school, and 30 inclusive children exit. Their faces are so different when they come out..

This year also, the teams came one section at a time, and were left in awe as they understood how we use mobile phones, computers, chop vegetables, cook on fire, serve on plates, eat food independently, use libraries and resource centers, and use special aids to do everything else.

This year also, the students had a lot of immersive pre experiences. Every class did something to prepare for the visit. The children prepared songs that they wanted to sing at the school, some of them made beautiful bracelets and earrings and canvas pouches. It was soooo good to see them hand over things that they had made themselves..

The visit typically lasts 90 minutes, and is an experience of a lifetime - for everyone - the teachers, the students and us. Every single time, every single year.




Till next year, then!

The SOIL SIP Team is the best SIP Team of 2015-16 batch, and we have an article in The Better India

For some reason, we missed mentioning it here..

The SIP Team of 2015-16 - Saranya, Cauvery, Rethina and Vigneshwar, were adjudged the best outgoing SIP Team of SOIL. This is from out of 18 SIP teams this year.

https://www.facebook.com/atindranath.bhattacharya.3/posts/10209059202022189

And here is a link to the awesome videos that chronicle the journey of this group:
Esha Journey for this batch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaYggRDCD8M

Tour De Vision Promotion Events: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp4EKTeA2u4

Tour De Vision 2016 Final Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dOptvt6a4

Batch Feedback:

Rethina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrJOc7vp9EM

Vigneshwar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NctvIfGe32s

And the previous year's batch, which truly laid the foundation for this batch's success:

Amit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziqKDdyNwW8

Vrishin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SHeVjtOoc

Pooja Singh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDDxyFQoOp8

Karen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBAsZh5QF9o


Part II:
Just yesterday, the Esha blog was featured among the top blogs of India, and today, The Better India carried a story on our CLABIL and CLABIL Outreach Projects.

We are so grateful! Please do spread the word. The idea of CLABIL is not for us to get credit, but for everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, to get access to this knowledge and literary resource.

http://www.thebetterindia.com/56802/library-for-audio-books-india-clabil/

 

SOIL Esha team wins the best outgoing SIP Team - 2016! Celebration Time!!

It is our pleasure and privilege to share that our Social Innovation Program team from #SOIL - School of Inspired Leadership, has won the Best Outgoing SIP Team this year. This is an honour well deserved by the team - that worked really hard all through the year on everything that Esha does, and then some more - Blind Walk, Social Media Management, Tour De Vision, doing Braille cards, and other projects.

Please join us in congratulating Rethina Kumar, Vigneshwar Ganesan, Cauvery Jalan and Saranya Balasubramanian - for being the rock stars that they have been! Thank you Atindra Nath Bhattacharya sir and the entire SOIL team for your encouragement. And of course, Randonneur Rajesh Dhuddu for his awesome mentoring.

To celebrate their journey with Esha, they have created a special video covering everything that they did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaYggRDCD8M

And to hear their experience , we recommend that you head to Esha's Youtube channel, where videos of their feedback, and of the previous batch, are uploaded:

https://www.youtube.com/user/eshabraille/videos

The CLABIL Outreach Program is Underway!

In December this year, we had one of our audacious dreams. We dreamt that we want to take CLABIL directly to a large population that can benefit from it directly. The idea was to test the hypothesis that we can make a difference to people by giving them free access to knowledge content in their own language - without needing to read.

CLABIL Outreach Project in Delhi NCR Region, upto March 2016

Am happy to share this - we have done some extensive work around this outreach project since January 1.

The pics are in the collage above, but they really don't do justice to what we actually saw!

In other news, we also did a Braille session on March 5th at the Galleria Market, Gurgaon.

Learn Braille in 15 minutes!

 

Jugalbandi Chess Championship and National Blind Cricket Tournament - December 2015

This December is going to be a Sports Fiesta.

From 17th to the 20th of December, we will see the National Cricket Tournament for the Blind.

Teams participating in the Nationals are as follows:

 North zone: Haryana & Uttar Pradesh, East zone: Odisha & West Bengal

West zone: Gujarat & Rajasthan and South zone: Andhra Pradesh & Karnataka

 These teams will be divided into 2 groups will play the league matches, top 2 teams of each group will qualify for the Semi Finals.

 

Ground are as follows:

 

Ground A will be Civil Services ground, Chanakyapuri, near Ashoka Hotel, Delhi & Ground B will be Tau Devilal Stadium Gurgaon.

 17th to 19th of December 2 matches at each ground 1st match from 9 AM to 12.30 PM 2nd match from 1 PM to 4.30 PM.

 

20th December Semi Final match at each ground from 9 AM to 12.30 PM.

 

21st December Final match at Civil Services ground, Chanakyapuri, near Ashoka Hotel, Delhi from 10 AM to 1.30 PM.

 

Prize distribution will commence at 2.30 PM.

 

For Details:

 For any further information regarding tournament please feel free to get in touch with Mr. John David at +91-9449864785 or Email: ejohndavid@gmail.com

 

 

Jugalbandi Chess Tournament

 

Astha Foundation (www.astha.in) is working on transforming lives through sports.

Once in a year they conduct unique sports activity called Jugalbandi Sports - that allows people with and without disability to come together for a common purpose and understand each other  and  support each other.

 

Read More here: JUGALBANDI SPORTS

One such sports event is CHESS Jugalbandi . Tentative date for the Chess Jugalbandi is 20th Dec 2015.

• There are no charges for participation.
• You can participate from your school/institution or as individual.
• Transportation will be provided.
• CASH PRIZES of Rs 30000 to distributed among all + Certificates + The participants will carry the Chess  Boards with them.
• Reporting time is 9 AM - Tournament would start at 10 AM and complete at 5.30/6PM PM.

The participants who are keen on participating can send in there names and contact information to mansi.85@gmail.com.

 

 

Suno Books - The Mobile App Partner to CLABIL

Today, we want to talk about a totally awesome partnership -
www.sunobooks.com .
Suno is the mobile app partner that makes it possible for you to listen to our audio content on your Android Device.
...

On the google Play Store, the app is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details….
Here is what you must know about Suno, and why we have partnered with them:
1. The app is created by a very talented professional on his personal time.
2. The app only provides copyright free content in Hindi from our library. Very compliant.
3. The app is free. For the CLABIL content, you will never have to see ads.
4. The app does not store your personal data, or even personally identifiable data. It doesn't sell any information to anyone. This is a labour of love and a realisation of a personal idea.
5. The app is improving all the time!!
Do us a favour please - download the app, do try it out, and do share your feedback with us. Every time you do, we can make the app better and more user friendly. smile emoticon

SOIL Read Fest 2015 - 120 files in a day!

Today, the students and faculty and volunteers at SOIL got together to create 120 audio files for the online audio library  - in English, Tamil, and Hindi.

While the volunteers will share their own experience by tomorrow, a quick look at the languages and the top volunteers today! More Power to you folks.

 

Read Fest at Copal Amba, Gurgaon - Sep 2015

From Sep 7 - 15, 2015 Copal Amba , a Moody's company, held the "Read Fest" at their Gurgaon office. This was the second Read Fest for Copal, who were also our partners for a Read Fest in 2012.

While we are still counting and cataloguing.. 73 volunteers worked hard to create almost a hundred files.

This goes out to say a Special Thank you! to the volunteers who worked tirelessly to ensure that each volunteer was guided, called only when their time slot appears, everything catalogued and checked.. Thank you.. Anuradha, Inderdev, Lakshmi and Priyanka.. for your unending energy and incredible commitment.

Thank you, too, to the Copal Amba team for making this so special - Neha Narang, Priyom, and their entire team.

Recording audio books for the online audio library

Help from the Control Center Volunteer

Recording is fun, especially for a noble cause.

The tireless control center and Priyom

Being Control Center is a lot of hard work - Inderdev, Anuradha, Lakshmi and Priyanka

Recording Telugu content for the online audio library

The Esha Thank you Cards generated much curiosity, appreciation, and conversation, in that order. All volunteers got one.

Posing with our recording volunteers!

It's that easy!

The enthusiasm of the volunteers, and their happiness, had to be seen to be believed.

As the Daanotsav approaches, we have 3 confirmations for Read Fests across India. Do spread the word. The Read Fest is a lovely way to give back, within our own office/school, and to create something that lasts forever, and can be reused again and again.

The Audio Library is at www.braillecards.org/audio.php.

The content from this Read Fest is likely to be updated before 30th Sep, 2015. We will announce that too!! :)

A major technical change is happening with the online library right now.. keep watching this space for more!

Writing about a cute memory..

They were the first batch of SOIL that we worked with. One of the social experiments we tried was 'Value of Books". It was simple. We took a table and put lots of books on it, and small earth piggy bank there. You were free to pick up any book, put the money you think the book deserves. When done, you could also bring the book back. All funds (if any) were to be donated to Esha..

This is what happened when we broke off that piggy bank..

 

Suno - the app to access CLABIL

Logo of the Suno App on Google Play Store

This has been a great week for Esha. First, we launched the volunteering page on the website.

Next, on June 12th, we held the first open 9Tanki workshop - where the participants were as young as 15 and some of them older than 40. For the first time, varied perspectives were present on the same stage and it enriched our view of how 9Tanki can change perspectives, and lives.

And now, we are so happy to share this : Yogesh is a bright engineer. On his own personal time, and out of his interest, he has created an app in partnership with CLABIL. All the free content of CLABIL in Hindi is now available on this Android app. It is simply called "Suno"(सुनो ) Suno literally means "Listen" in Hindi. Simple. And Powerful.

Some salient features of the app are:

• Content can be downloaded on the local phone.
• Chapter navigation is easily possible.
• The library will be remotely updated as and when we add books.
• Once downloaded, the book will not need to be downloaded again :)

I have personally tested the app with the native Android accessibility mode and its very good handling.

We encourage you to try the app even if you are sighted (since all content is free) . And of course, spread the word to NGOs, govt schools and children who are not enrolled in formal schooling. We have a lot of stories for them to learn from..

The app is available here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunobooks.suno

OR, just go to the Play store and search for "Suno" - we got it easily enough.

 

Videos of the experience of the SOIL team of 2015 as volunteers of Esha

On the last day of SIP, we requested the team to share their experience of being Esha Volunteers - on camera. Since I wanted it to be real, we gave them about 15 minutes to prepare what they are going to say. No rehearsals, no script - just speak from the heart.

Last night, we uploaded those videos to the Youtube channel of Esha. We encourage you to see these videos to know what it is like to volunteer for Esha.

Vrishin Bhamri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SHeVjtOoc

Amit Dhalwale : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziqKDdyNwW8

Pooja Singh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFpST1Ee_0U

And the winner of the award for HR Leadership Program, and one of our star volunteers: Karen D Souza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEdLMUIbbic

Do see all of Esha's videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eshabraille/videos
 

The SIP Team of SOIL 2014-15

Last year, the SIP presentation at SOIL was scheduled for 10th June. That was the day my kid sister was getting married. Rajesh Dhuddu, a friend of Esha who is also on our Advisory Panel, very graciously agreed to take the presentation. And we had 4 students who chose us - Karen, Pooja, Vrishin and Amit.

The year started with them looking for an office for Esha. The next activity that they trained for was taking the students of TSRS to the blind school visit. They also were sent to the Karol Bagh blind school to meet Nirdosh, and see the people they were going to work for in the year ahead.

After that, the planning for the cycling event started. From October to Feb, the team worked on the cycling trip, meeting every week for project updates, getting encouragement, support, admonishment, and general push to keep going. They were ably mentored by Rajesh Dhuddu , and on the 8th of Feb, 2015, we had our first TourdeVision, all thanks to the SOIL students, Alisha, and all of the Friends of Esha.

But that was not a place to rest on our laurels. Very soon, the team was working on updating all the communication content of Esha. And on the last SIP day - March 18th, I took the day off to treat them to a very special experience. The day started early - very early. After all, we had to travel from Gurgaon to Greater Noida. The team witnessed the 9Tanki workshop conducted by Raju Koli, and the impact it has on the school students.
After that, we went to the India Habitat Center. To do our first "Blind Walk" . Tour De Vision had tried to raise awareness abt the fact that there simply aren't enough disabled people out in public spaces. The Blind Walk tried to understand why that is - by closing our eyes and trying to access public spaces. This event was covered by the Times of India and brought much public awareness about the issue.

To thank them for their participation, we got momentoes made for the team. And the best news came 2 days ago - Esha was adjudged the best NGO, that provides students with the best learning opportunity! Today, Rajesh and I attended the convocation to receive the award.. and what a day!!

Do see a photo journey of the year here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.965620650128731.1073741834.180352898655514&type=1