Shehzeen dares to dream big, wants to educate deaf kids from poor families

Shehzeen Shaikh is a first-year junior college student of commerce at the Training and Educational Centre for the Hearing Impaired (TEACH) in Kalina, Mumbai. She has big dreams of giving back to young kids, who like her, are deaf.

“I wish to complete my education, graduation and do B.Ed. course as I want to become a teacher and help children like me take up higher education and become big in their lives.”

Shehzeen has very clear ideas about how she wants to help deaf children based on her own experiences.

Understanding English is a big task for me as I did not have English as subject or as a language in school. I knew only Hindi but in higher education the entire syllabus is in English so at first, I did not understand what was being taught. I could have done much better, if I had studied English in school.

Shehzeen gradually overcame her problems through sheer hard work. “It was not easy and I started with alphabets, words, sentences and gradually moved to reading and writing. With hard work, perseverance, a lot of practice and help from teachers, family and friends, I can now read, write and study in English.”

She says that people must try to communicate and understand the deaf. She believes that everyone must know basic sign language and be patient and polite with the deaf.

In her spare time, Shehzeen loves meeting people, and visiting her home in Pune. She is a big fan of Hindi films and especially movies that star Shraddha Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, and Shahrukh Khan.

Read the stories of the others featured in the Children Who Inspire series

S Akash

Deep

Deepika

Neha

Afsara

Chitrabhanu

Aamir

Samyuktha

Hannah

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