Hyderabad NGO Sahi is working to empower deaf kids from poor families

Sahi, an NGO in Hyderabad, is reaching out to deaf children below 15 years of age from poor families. Since their initiative began, Sahi has reached to over 1,000 children in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Sahi works in partnership with Apollo Hospitals to empower deaf children in these two states.

Founded by Divakar Reddy and Vinay Kumar in 2004, the approach here is to help deaf children by providing surgeries. Sahi holds camps for deaf children in rural areas. Here they identify beneficiaries who are later provided with hearing aids or surgeries.

Cognitive hearing impairment surgeries cost as high as Rs nine lakh per surgery. Sahi pays 50% of the cost to enable it to happen for the child.

Rural areas lack awareness about hearing. That is one of the biggest challenges that we face as an NGO. Some of them have a hearing impairment in only one ear. They refuse to do a surgery or use hearing aids saying that they can manage with the other. Even parents of young kids are fine with this. Awareness on this matter is need of the hour – Venkataramana, Co-ordinator, Sahi.

Sahi is in talks with the government of Andhra Pradesh to be included in the Arogyasri project. Here, people from economically backward families can get the benefit of free medical treatment at government and private hospitals. Sahi believes that this way it will have a better reach in rural areas.

Thanks to corporate support and the partnership with Apollo Hospitals, funds are not an issue for Sahi, and they want to focus on creating greater awareness.

Sahi plans to spread their venture to more parts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. They want to reach out to more deaf children and help them out.

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