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Publication: Hindustan Times No Sight, but a ticket to ride Car Rally to pair sighted drivers with visually challenged navigators, maps in Braille On Sunday, Mumbai will witness action, adrenaline and screeching wheels as 100 cars compete in a rally. Each vehicle will hold a navigator armed with a route map – in Braille. Twenty – three year old Nikita Patil feels her way across a map deftly, and she can hit the right road, but she does not have a car yet. Last year she missed the opportunity to participate in the rally because not many car owners came forward. The rally will stretch from Colaba to Bandra, while another batch will set off from Mulund to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. “The drivers and navigators do not meet till the day of the rally. The Braille guide has been specially developed and kept secret. It will be released minutes before the rally,” says Clarence A. Gomes, director, All India State Branch Department, NAB. Worli resident Rita Rajgarhia (37) was a driver at the rally last year. She is participating this year too, and has pushed her brothers to participate as well. So has Vinoy Parikh (30) a businessman from Shivaji Park. “Ten of my friends are participating this year with me, after hearing about my experience last year,” he said. Aarti and her husband Viral Kedia will compete against each other in different cars. Every fault registers negative marking. The team with minimum negative markings wins. “Coordination is critical but it is exciting. My driver needs to follow my instructions,” says 34-year-old Mahesh. His wife and daughter will come to cheer him in the rally and he has no intention of disappointing them. Publication: Bombay Times Not Blind to the Need
Rajay Sabha M.P Supriya Sule was the chief guest; Lina Ashar, Chair person of Kangaroo Kids Education was the guest of honour. Actor Poonam Dhillon and K. Ramakrishna, Secretary, NAB, who were also present, gave away awards to the top three schools. While Maneckji Cooper Education Trust School topped among 50 schools, Delhi Public School, Nerul stood second and SVKM’s CNM School and N.D Parekh pre-primary was third in terms of highest donation collection. With the generous donations, NAB plans to utilize this money to improve the infrastructure and facilities for the children. Says Pais, “The cost of one Brailler is Rs. 10,000/- which is shared between three schools and the visually challenged children attending those schools. Each Braille kit per child cost Rs. 750/- and it would be necessary that each child can be given these facilities to equip them with technical assistance and aids for their better performance. Computers with JAWS, software that enables the blind to work on a computer would be an asset in basic learning and knowledge advancement. NAB hopes to provide every blind child with computers to ensure that the can pursue higher studies. It houses a Braille Press with four state-of-the-art that includes printing machines, paper cost for which is very expensive and there is a need to fund Braille paper as all text-books are printed at the NAB Braille press and are giving totally free to the blind children.” While corporate sponsorship takes care of most of their needs, government funding needs to be upped. Says Pais, “government assistance is limited to certain projects and are not enough to take care of the increasing demands of the blind. The source of income therefore,, is from corporate funding and fund-raising done at schools by the school children are really beneficial. We really appreciate it.” Facts
About NAB The National Association for the Blind (NAB) came to being in the year 1952 in Mumbai. It is the oldest and largest organization working in the field of disabilities in general and blindness in particular. NAB was established with a prime view to cater humanitarian services to the blind by providing good education, vocational training and ultimately rehabilitating them socio-economically towards their self-sufficiency.
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  Did you know? Blind people can drive! Get more facts... |
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Remember as kids, when you went to neighbours houses in th colony asking for donations? Even 30 years later, this tradition is still going strong. National Asociation for the Blind (NAB) organized the Annual Awards function for schools every year, to solicit generous donations collected by the school children. The fund was held at Yashwant Natya Mandir, Matunga on March 1, where over 50 schools were present for the awards ceremony. The money generated from the donations are claimed to be well utilized. Says Gaynor Pais, Director, Fund Raising Committee, NAB, “The generated money goes towards the education of the blind, providing them educational aids like Braille Kits, Braillers, teaches salaries to assist blind children in schools, special tutors to assist blind children to cope with studies and compete with other children as part of the Integrated Education programme that includes blind children in other than blind schools.”
Number of Braille books – 39,760