Painting Workshop at Junta Blind Centre

Esha conducted its Annual painting workshop at Junta Blind Centre, Gurgaon. I was one of the facilitators for the workshop and what I learnt was something I would like to share.

The students at the training centre who had newly joined with an average age of 20 had never painted before. Art and painting which is a representation of visual impression is something they feel is not for them. The students were sceptic and smiled asking us not to embarrass them which just shook us up.

We felt Art, Sports and other activities are for all and neglecting them for disability is also a form of non-inclusion which is equally important as working for an inclusive environment outside.

There are relatively easy art adaptations to make it accessible to students who are visually challenged. The students can explore a variety of art materials, the activity can be made more tactual for them to touch and feel.

Verbal instruction on the simple steps of making a card:

•   Fold the ends of the paper and feel the ends to ensure the corners are in alignment
•  Bring the front side on top
• Ensure students understand what they are going to paint (house, mountains, sun, flowers or butterflies). It is fine to not produce exactly the same image as it appears in reality which will limit their imagination. The association can be taught through Art.
• Location of the art materials to be informed to the students by helping them look at them with their hands and fingers
• Using fingers to measure as you draw and paint them with thumbs and brushes
• Using tactful borders using crayons or markers which can be felt and painting can be done within the boundary
• Vegetable painting – Ladies finger, onions and beans to make beautiful tulip flowers and butterflies by painting on the veggies and printing their impression
• Finger painting – Tearing and folding paper, painting with fingers and feeling the image develops hand strength for the kids
• Scent and other pleasant fragrance can be added to the paint to get a better feel

The students had a wonderful day more than making greeting cards they enjoyed painting and got rid of their inhibitions.

This Week.. TourDeVision Prep Begins !

This was an awesome week.

First, there was the Chess Jugalbandi, being conducted by the Astha Foundation. In this event, the VI and the sighted players play in the same tournament. And what fun it is!

Astha Jugalbandi 2015 Event in Delhi

Astha Jugalbandi 2015 Event in Delhi/Gurgaon

 

 Then, we did our Annual Event - The Painting Workshop at the Junta Blind School for the students. This workshop was conducted by the SOIL Students, and I am amazed at the output of the students. We don't throw these cards away - we use them to say "Thank you" during Tour De Vision. So if you are participating, you will get one too.

This is how we paint - using our fingers to mark as we draw, and wet brushes to paint! Esha Painting Workshop at the Junta Blind Center, Gurgaon

This is how we paint - using our fingers to mark as we draw, and wet brushes to paint! Esha Painting Workshop at the Junta Blind Center, Gurgaon

This is how we paint - using our fingers to mark as we draw, and wet brushes to paint! Esha Painting Workshop at the Junta Blind Center, Gurgaon

This is how we paint - using our fingers to mark as we draw, and wet brushes to paint! Esha Painting Workshop at the Junta Blind Center, Gurgaon

And the third thing that happened was that work has started in full sing for the next Tour de Vision - our annual cycling event to raise awareness about Blindness and lack of public spaces access. We also raise funds through this event.

So if you are in town on the 7th of Feb, 2016, you absolutely must make it to the Shiv Nadar School - anytime upto 11 am is great. There will be a cycling event, and some other great surprises to showcase Ability.

Here's to more!

 

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.

 

 

Aamna Zaidi's article on Mycity4kids

http://www.mycity4kids.com/parenting/brooklyn-baby/article/learning-to-see-again-journeys-with-my-blind-son

It's worth a read. Please don't miss this one.

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

Impact of Audio Files as a learning intervention - Kick Starting the Exploratory Research @ SAI BHOOMI !!!

SAI Bhoomi is a not for profit school in Kanhai Village. Bhoomi caters to the educational needs of the students of Kanhai village. The main objective of Bhoomi is to educate the children to a level where they learn to read, write, be more self-aware and understand the importance of education free of cost. The subjects that are taught in the school are Hindi, English and Math. Apart from this the students are taught poems, shown movies and are made to present them to the class. There are 20 kids aged between 5 to 8 and a teacher to tutor them.

We visited the school as part of our attempt to understand the impact of the audio files in teaching, as a learning intervention. There are different learning styles visual, auditory & kinesthetic. Can these audio files also be used by the non-blind? Does it make an impact? We wanted to find answers for them. We played some basic poetry and moral story contents from CLABIL that were new to the kids. After listening to the audio they were able to recite it back.

Our observations were i) the kids found it amusing & interesting to learn from different voices in which they were recorded ii) schools like BHOOMI that have classes with kids of different age groups & grasping power the audios can be repeated till everyone is on track iii) Teachers can also widen their knowledge on various topics by listening to relevant audios.

We will kick start our exploratory research by recording responses of children from different age groups and schools. The impact of audio files as a learning intervention & content requirements for CLABIL can be studied.

Esha @ SAI BHOOMI, Kanhai Village

Read Fest @ SOIL, Gurgaon – October 2015 during Daanotsav

Read Fest has always been a much awaited event at SOIL. The posters, mailers and flyers set the festive mood. Interesting and useful content for the CLABIL Knowledge repository were gathered parallely by the organizing team. Rooms were blocked to ensure noiseless recording. The Read Fest Organizer’s guide was a perfect and handy checklist!!!

As the adage goes “Reading is the most special of therapies for ending a tension-filled day”, we had active participation from the students and faculty of SOIL throughout the day. Few of them carried their own material. Shahid was our creative contributor he recited Rahim’s Dohe so beautifully and also recorded few of his own poems. I should say Nitin, Thamba and Saurabh became kids while reading Thenali Raman stories and Short stories for children with pun and energy. Nidhi and Srinidhi with their calm and soothing voice recorded the ‘Benefits of breathing’, ‘Surya Namaskar’ and ‘On-meditation’.  The Star of the Day was Soumyadeep no one could stop him from finishing Vivekananda’s “A glimpse into his Life”. We had contents for kids, poetry for adults, general awareness topics, Wellness related material, Travel guides, Leadership and self-help books recorded for the day. Works of Osho, Robin Sharma and Richard Templar can now be enjoyed from CLABIL.

Read Fest brought back fresh memories for few of our participants who read short stories for children. Nitin who has always loved the bed-time stories from his mother, now enjoyed reading one for the kids. Soumyadeep who always wanted to read Swami Vivekananda’s work grabbed the opportunity and finished the book for us. He was concerned if the audio would inspire someone someday and he would be happy to hear that. Srinidhi who read the goodness of Yoga brought her own material with meditation mantras that she follows. Arpita and Priyanka read the Lonely Planet’s travel book on hill stations in India. The delivery and the narration would make one visualize the locality through the audio. Pallavi Tandon faculty of SOIL who participates every year said its fascinating to know your voice could make a difference in a good way and appreciated the efforts of Esha for adding knowledge through our voices. On the whole adding 120 files to CLABIL in new and diverse areas was a pat on the back.

Osho's brilliant work now in CLABIL

Poems and Short stories being recorded

Students & Faculty from SOIL enjoying the Read Fest

SOIL getting ready for Readfest'15

CLABIL Catalog updated!

AND WE DID IT!! After a month of painstakingly listening to hundreds of files, correcting cataloguing errors, removing links to partner files that don't work any more.. the catalog is now updated!! 4916 files currently available...

Here are the main changes that you will observe immediately:
1. Inclusive Planet links removed - all 190 of them.
2. New content added - from our most recent Read Fests, Summer Projects etc.
3. Folders have been rationalised - 2 spellings for the same thing.
4. Hundreds of file entries corrected.
5. Some content has been deleted - Current Affairs that are no longer current, propaganda items etc.

In future, we will be very sensitive to propaganda items. Am sorry, but we have learnt to watch out as a result of this cleanup.

Do check out, the newly refreshed, cleaned up www.braillecards.org/audio.php!

 

More Jazzed up Braille Cards and a Brand New Catalog for CLABIL

Phew! We have been very very busy at Esha.

We jazzed up our festive braille cards - Thank You, Season's Greetings, Happy Diwali.. we went from Golden Bows to pink bouquet effect (tiny ones) and we even used decorations based on quilling!

Given that the cards are white and tend to stain easily, we put each one in its own packaging to ensure it stays white and nice.

On Tuesday, a friend will give us some space to display the cards, and we hope that we will be able to sell some. You can wish us luck.

On CLABIL, we have been cleaning up a LOT. Almost 25 hours of cleaning up later, we are only halfway through. Some content has been deleted for the first time, a lot of Read Fest content needs to be catalogued and added. We have added a new column - Size, so that the user can decide whether the file is too large for them to download on their current connection. This is based on user feedback we have got multiple times. Thank you to everyone who gave us this gyaan.

With a heavy heart, we acknowledge the fact that our much loved crowdsharing  platform for the VI community - inclusiveplanet.com, will never go back to being what it was. For a long time now, I have hoped that the folks at the center are able to resolve the hosting issues, but apparently, that is not to be.

Accordingly, we will be removing the partner content from inclusive planet.com and all files from that url will now be removed. It is a very sad decision, but we have waited really long.

We hope that someone revives Inclusiveplanet.com some day and restores it to its former glory.

That's it at our end.. for now. Pictures later.