Experience of Handing out a Braille Card..

Every time I speak with people who got Braille done on their cards, I hear such beautiful stories of relationships, great first impressions, people who wonder and people who love..


Sharing one such story.. this time, I requested them to please speak on camera also...

The Esha Organisation Presentation is now live

The Esha Organisation Presentation has been a long time coming. It is finally released on Slideshare.net. Easy to understand, comprehensive and quick. Do check it out:
http://www.slideshare.net/nidhikaila/esha-organisation-presentation-august-2016

Thank you Cards in Braille

What is inclusive and exclusive at the same time?

This:




Thank You Cards for Businesses.. and People

This year, we created Braille Thank You and Seasons Greetings cards that are so cute - complete with a hand made bow on top.

Why did we want to do it?
See, Braille is not just for the VI. Look at the card above. Its beautiful, its exclusively handcrafted, and anyone getting this will stop in their tracks and look at this card - CAREFULLY. Those .5 seconds of your customer's mindspace - will make an imprint in their mind. That's not easy in today's stimulus heavy, screen driven world.
 In fact, the shock value of a braille card is its greater strength. Someday, we hope that Braille Cards are so common that there is no shock value attached to them. But that's for later. Today, they are amazing pieces of engagement and brand building. They are inclusive.. because they put the spotlight on the fact that Braille cards are necessary.. and they are exclusive.. because they don't look like the next card shop delivered Thank you cards. They look like someone took the time to select the precious thing. And that's all we want.

Talk about Braille Cards. Support Us. Please!

 

Year in Review - 2013

Its that time of the year again.. when we look wistfully at the year gone by and hopefully at the year coming up..

This is also Esha’s annual roundup for you – in familiar bullet points J

This was a very good year for Esha. We entered into some lovely partnerships:

·         SOIL – School of Inspired Leadership. 4 students from SOIL are doing an year long internship with Esha, where they contribute one day a week to working with us. It has been a lovely experience with Rosemary, Sabrish, Sahil and Vipul. SOIL students recorded for CLABIL for the third year in a row during the Joy of Giving week. The relationship with everyone at SOIL has been too wonderful and enriching to be put into words.

 

·         The Sri Ram School, Aravali also was a year long partner. Class 7 students of TSRS Aravali went to a blind school as part of the school’s partnership with Esha. I always say that the blind don’t get greeting cards. But this year, students of Class 7 surprised us by making one card for every student that they were going to meet at the blind school. I was, simply, overwhelmed. Am taking the liberty of attaching a picture of the cards they made, along with their teachers.

Every single student of Class 7 also recorded for CLABIL. J Every visit to the blind school was an enriching experience for both sides – the guests always prepared something for their hosts – a song, a card, a skit.. the works. The enthusiasm of these children truly made one grateful for the work that happens through us. 180 students are today more sensitive to the needs of visual challenge, thanks to the initiative of their school.

·         The Kahaani Project was our third important partnership of the year. Now, we will share each other’s content and use it for common good. Thank you, Ajay for contributing over 50 files to CLABIL.

·         In May this year, we ran a 3 day training program on Open Source based personal computing for the visually challenged. The potential was immense. This training was run at 3 blind schools in the Delhi NCR region as a pilot. Unfortunately, that training will have to be part of our lessons learnt, till we are able to redesign the model and launch the program again. But one good thing came out of that training – we got an Open Source evangelist who is now working to familiarise his peers with the free software that makes personal computing so easy. Thanks to Archana, he also has a personal laptop of his own, and he uses it to good effect.

·         Braille cards continue to be popular and well liked. The Delhi center, which was operational for the most part, had to be closed (again!) because of the migration of the person doing that work here in Delhi. It is my fervent hope that these adults, who learn the Braille enabling of visiting cards, are in some way, doing things in their own villages too.

·         The theatre workshops had a very good run in the first half of the year and slowed down in the second half. Am now planning to have public workshops and am working towards getting the space for that.. if that happens, we will be able to offer workshops to a lot more people.. you can wish us luck on that one, and yes, if someone you know is looking for a fun activity for their team in the NCR region, do think of the 9Tanki theatre workshop. It will be a lot of fun!

·         This year, we ran an exhaustive market test study on the Tactile mazes and on the basis of the results, we have had to take the tough decision of discontinuing tactile mazes as an Esha product. But they will always remain special. You can see this much loved, but unsustainable product here: https://www.facebook.com/eshabraille/media_set?set=a.165678970149679.58488.100001227328495&type=1

·         CLABIL continued to grow – organically. With volunteers and partners and loving friends. We close the year with 1960 files  - just short of 2000. But there is a lot more work to be done.

I noticed that the update is really long, and we have only tried to sum up the most important points.. J There is no end to how far we can go, when we travel with friends.. so i will end the year with the emotion one feels most at this time – Gratitude. For every single Friend of Esha. For everyone who has been with us as we complete 9 years and enter our 10^th year in January 2014, and for everyone who joined the caravan along the way.

For every prayer that was sent up for us, and for every hand that helped.

But most of all, for the God that chose an instrument, and kept believing in it.

Wishing you and your loved ones a very happy 2014!

Enhancing the Tactile Intelligence of children

 Have you ever wondered why, from the age of 5 months or so, children reach out to TOUCH everything? I have wondered about it a lot. What is it that makes all children, irrespective of where they are, do certain things at a certain age, instinctively. They automatically know that chewing on something will help with the teething process and put everything in their mouth.

Sure, we keep stopping them from doing it, we child proof the house. But the question is, WHY do they do it?

And i think, the answer is, that at that age, children are instinctively trying to enhance their tactile intelligence - the ability to touch a thing and understand it.
How do we respond to this very natural, very important need to develop a kind of intelligence? By child proofing the house and running around with, "dont touch this, dont touch that. stay away from that."

What happens to our children when they are deprived of this very important learning? While doing research on this post, i read up a few studies on the link between tactile learning and intelligence. What i found was SHOCKING, to say the least. There is significant correlation between tactile learning and cognitive ability of a child.

Quote from FamilyEducation:
Most of the school population excels through kinesthetic means: touching, feeling, experiencing the material at hand. "Children enter kindergarten as kinesthetic and tactual learners, moving and touching everything as they learn. By second or third grade, some students have become visual learners. During the late elementary years some students, primarily females, become auditory learners. Yet, many adults, especially males, maintain kinesthetic and tactual strengths throughout their lives."(Teaching Secondary Students Through Their Individual Learning Styles, Rita Stafford and Kenneth J. Dunn; Allyn and Bacon, 1993)



And again from a study by Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, USA.

Factor analytic results suggest tactile measures have a significant relationship with measures of cognitive ability.

For more, please see this:
https://www.google.co.in/?gws_rd=cr&ei=Lts7Uv-pIKapiALPtoHIDw#q=studies+on+the+importance+of+tactile+intelligence

Why was i doing this research? Because last night, i was making these tactile mazes again. And wondered how children will really benefit from these toys? So i googled to find out if there is any linkage between tactile learning tools and a child's intelligence?

The evidence was so overwhelming that i had to pause whatever i was doing and call a friend who is an educational advisor, and share this with her.

YOUR CHILDREN NEED TACTILE LEARNING. Please, please, provide it to them.

I am going to write a post on how you can do this at home - Enhance Tactile learning in your children.

You can also use Esha's new toys in that segment. But please remember, its not necessary to use Esha toys for tactile learning. These are just tools. Tactile learning is all around us. 

3D touch maze for 4-5 year olds. You cannot solve this maze easily by looking at it. Tracing your finger makes it much easier. Try it!



This tactile learning tool has 5 different textures you can teach a child with. The red crystals mark "corners" - very important lesson for 2 year olds. The pearl finish, the stones, the 3D color and the outline of a fish that can be felt by a child. In this maze, you have to reach all the raised elements of the puzzle using only the raised lines as your "highway" Try it!