Republic Day Celebrations at Sandnya Srushti

Every celebration in the campus of Sandnya Srushti is essentialy a learning opportunity for our mentally challenged students. Republic Day is no exception indeed. On Wednesday we celebrated this National festival with quite a fan fare. All our students were in white uniform. Mr.Bal Shende, Rtd. Principal of Anand Niketan collage, Warora was the chief guest for this function. The whole campus of Sandnya Srushti was shining and was full of enthusiasm in staff and students as well. There were parents of students and our well wishers and donors as well. The whole programme was scheduled for one and half hour. It started at 10:00 am sharp with flag hosting at the hands of the chief guest, followed by rashtra geet and zenda geet by our students. This followed with march past by our mentally disabled students and than a drill by them. Mr. Bal Shende spoke for about 15 mts and emphasized the need of general people taking more interest in such work and the organization not only for funding aid but in the process of giving these special children the due dignity in the society which they deserve. This session after thanks giving was adjourned for the tea break and was followed by next programme by "Matrusangharsh" at 12;00 noon in our first floor assembly hall.

 One of my old Friends Mr.Tejinder Singh Uggal from Patiala was also present for the programme. He reached Nagpur yesterday mid night for a marriage in his relation. I was really delighted to see him in the audience.  Normally people do not give any importance or priority to such events and put forward many useless excuses. There were few more surprises in the audience like Dr. [Mrs.] & Dr.Ramkrishanan. Dr.Ramkrishanan is my Friend from swimming pool group. He has been a donor since quite some time, but had never visited the Institute. On this occasion he honoured the invitation by coming to Sandnya Srushti.

  The disappointing part is the low attendance of our own students. Not that this was a exceptional year, but, it is a regular apathy on the part of parents that they do not give any importance to their special kid and activities related to him. In spite of sufficient reminders, this attendance of students is low. We at Sandnya have been trying to motivate and encourage parents. They do not realize that, by not allowing their ward to participate in such events, they are in fact reducing the opportunities for learning as far as these special children are concerned. We at Sandnya try to find out more number of opportunities for them, but parents fail to realize this. We have been observing, that any eventuality or adjustment or emergency in the family of these mentally challenged children, the first casualty in rescheduling family programme is the activity related to this special child who happens to be "not a self advocate". Nevertheless, our enthusiasm is never dampened by this and we continue to create more and more learning opportunities for this special class of students.

By: Navin Deshpande, Secretary, SSS

website: www.sandnya.org