Ananda Day Care handicapped children in India
Clowns at Isai Ma(i)yam
Two clowns came to the children’s home and to the Ananda Day Care in May 2014. The clowns come from the Global Clowning Foundation, these clowns especially visit developing countries. They love to bring happiness and lightness to the places where it is needed most, like in slums, hospitals, and projects like Isai Ma(i)yam. With their merriness they hope the children can forget their problems, pain and sorrow for a little while and can just laugh a lot. It was really a big success, the children loved it!
Every morning they start by making music for one hour
Ananda Day Care offers handicapped children and youngsters a structured way of spending the day from 10 am to 3.30 pm. A fixed part of the program is making music, which they do every morning from 10 to 11 am.
The rear of the Ananda Day Care
At the back of the building there are swings, a skip, a slide and a sandbox. There are no other playing grounds in the neighborhood, so everyone really enjoys these playing devices.
Guna is very good at yoga
Yoga classes at Ananda Day Care
Twice a week a yoga teacher comes to the Ananda Day Care. Everyone is surprisingly good at it.
Dancing at Ananda Day Care
Once a while the cd player is taken out and everyone starts dancing. Most of them love dancing and loose themselves completely.
Ananda Day Care for children and young adults
At this moment 24 children and young adults having different handicaps and levels are given shelter. From Monday through Friday they spend their day exercising, singing, dancing, eating, drinking, resting and playing.
Vela in the restroom, Children in India
Ananda Day Care: handicapped children in India
Ananda Day Care, handicapped children come again
Until the beginning of 2011 Isai Ma(i)yam received a group of handicapped children for day care a few days a week. Because the organization (who had taken them on) had sold the school they were going to, the children didn’t come any more. Therefore, we dedicated ourselves to founding our own shelter for the disabled in Koot Road: Ananda Day Care. There seem to be many more handicapped children who stay at home under terrible circumstances and hardly come outside. We have searched for these children in the villages. Now we offer good day care to fourteen handicapped children and youngsters five days a week.
Our building is located in Koot Road, a village near Alankupam
Hammock
We have made special modifications to the building to be able to receive these children. So we made a wheelchair ramp and there is a resting room. One of our volunteers made a beach painting on the walls of the resting room. A hammock is hanging between two palm trees which were drawn.
Former ‘shelter child’ teaches
Punitha, a young woman who stayed with us as a child and has now finished the Music College, was an intern and worked with handicapped children in Pondicherry during her education. Together with teaching at our Art School, she would love to teach music to our new group of handicapped children. We are very happy about this and the children too. They really thrive since they came here. They also love the drive by car to us! In the morning they play music with us. In the afternoon we offer several activities, like claying, drawing and weaving. We also teach Tamil – and for the children who are up to it, English lessons.
The young adults Sri-Devi and John Bosco (once given shelter by Isai Ma(i)yam) will be assisting Punitha with the shelter and lessons, also assisted by two Indian volunteers who have a lot of experience with handicapped children and the Dutch students who are doing their internship with us.
Massage and physiotherapy
Near our school for the handicapped is a community hospital that is willing to give these children massage and physiotherapy for 25 rupees per person per month (only 40 eurocents!). With pleasure some handicapped children have already been using this facility for five months.
Day care of handicapped children
Five times a week a group of more than twenty mentally and/or physically disabled children and young adults come to Isai Ma(i)yam. In the village Trichitambalam (between Pondicherry and Auroville) we have modified a former clinic into a day care: Ananda Day Care.
Two young adults who grew up in our children’s home and completed the music education, are the daily supervisors and take care of the daily program with music and creative workshops. They are supported by two Indian social security women who have the required experience.
The handicapped children do physiotherapeutic exercises, yoga, dance, educational games, reading and writing exercises, if possible, and they get a warm meal. They are being picked up in the morning and brought back home in the afternoon by our bus, that has been especially modified to be able to transport these children.
The children have a safe home. They go to school and have music, singing and dancing lessons.