At Vigyan Valley, school education becomes reality for children with learning disabilities

Vigyan Valley is a learning Centre for children with autism and other learning disabilities. Founded by Ajith in the year 2008, Vigyan Valley has been empowering children through academics, arts and sports. Located in Kochi, Vigyan Valley has a place for drop outs for other schools too. Since they have classes from primary till 12th standard, their students do not have to look out for other schools to complete their education!

Currently, there are over 140 students at the learning centre. They are trained in regular academics, behavioural and learning support and skilled training as well. They are even taught to make handmade things including dish wash and hand wash powders. This will help them start their own businesses once they pass out from Vigyan Valley and handle it with ease!

Apart from empowering children with learning disabilities, Vigyan also provides early intervention programme. This programme is exclusively for children from rural areas who are between one day old up to three years of age. They reach out to parents from economically backward families to train them and provide guidelines on how to take care of their children with disabilities. This is their second successful year in early intervention!

Our biggest challenge is dearth of funds. We have no support from the government. If we had that, we could have reached out to more children with learning disabilities. Right now, we are struggling hard to meet both ends. We want to have the best facilities for our children just like any other school. But with our minimal funds, we have restrictions- Harish Kumar, Administrator-in-charge, Vigyan Valley.

There are over 28 special educators in Vigyan Valley. All of them are graduates in B.Ed for special education. This learning centre claims that they do not face any hardships because of a group of passionate and dedicated special educators.

“Some parents are still hesitant to send their child with learning disability to schools. But we live in a world where everyone is in a rat race. Education has become a commercial sector in itself. Hence, parents don’t have a choice but to send their children to schools like Vigyan Valley”, says Harish.

This learning centre equips a child to face the competitive world. Many of them are pursuing their higher studies in law, medicine and so on. Hence proving that, with the right guidance, children with learning disabilities can do extremely well in our society.

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