VAANI and Association of People with Disability

VAANI and The Association of People with Disability (APD) work together on a project which aims to promote the inclusion of deaf children in families, communities and services in Bangalore and Kolar District.

APD is a registered NGO which was started in 1959 by a group of people with disabilities and has developed services covering the areas of health, education, training, rural and urban community work to provide overall rehabilitation support to children and adults with all types of disabilities.

Project Details
Urban Inclusion Activities (Bangalore)
In Bangalore, VAANI works with children from the integrated primary school run by APD to support:

  • Parents’ training programmes to enable parents to develop skills in communicating with their deaf children
  • Twice-yearly informal vacation camps focusing on developing communication and language with their deaf child, for families
  • Specific individual support in speech therapy and sign language for 25 children
  • Training for staff who teach deaf children

Rural Inclusion Activities (Kolar District)

  • Our project with APD aims to ensure that rural service providers are able to include and support deaf children and their families:
  • Training in language and communication development for CBR workers
  • Regular home visits to support famliy’s and child’s language development and communication skills
  • Training for pre-school and Anganwadi teachers who will include deaf children in their classes
  • Awareness raising activities amongst mainstream teachers on the inclusion of deaf children
  • Parent training workshops on developing communication skills
  • Awareness raising activities for parents covering the rights of deaf children to education and other support and the importance of maintaining and using hearing aids.

Technical training programme

This programme aims to give young deaf people greater access to APD’s inclusive technical training programme by offering:

  • language and communication skills development training for young deaf people
  • training workshops covering life skills, the rights of deaf people and advocacy
  • training workshops on health and family life issues
  • training for staff in career counselling for young deaf people.

Find out more about APD