Jyothirgamaya Foundation conducted its first Echo location workshop, from the 6th to 14th of November. This is indeed a unique art in the history of orientation and mobility. This art of echolocation-navigation system was devised by the famous American Blind and a visionary, Mr. Daniel Kish the founder of “World Access for the Blind”. One of his ardent follower and co-worker Mr. Tomas Tajo, a Blind Echolocation & Perceptual Navigational Teacher came all the way from Belgium to conduct this intense workshop for our visually impaired participants at our Jyothirgamaya campus. During this workshop our Blind participants, learnt how to identify objects by their shapes and sizes such as plates, bowls, clothes and pillows, identification of outdoor objects of mother nature such as walls, trees, plants and bushes, the use of cane techniques along with echo location on busy roads and in parks, how to develop a good tongue click and a good clap which would enable us to identify various objects only by  their echoes. In this workshop nine of our old students participated and eagerly learnt all the techniques. We thank all our students for taking off from their perspective jobs and education and coming to participate in our workshop. The program ended with a leisure trip to “Veli Tourist Village” in Thiruvananthapuram where some of our students had the opportunity to experience horse riding.We thank our partner collaborative German organisation Fernbeziehung, whose representative Mr. Samuel Brielmaier was physically here to help and guide us and mentor us in each step of the workshop. We thank this organisation for all its support. We would also like to thank our caring friends, Mumbai and Deepam Foundation for their overall support and kindness. We would also like to express our sincere thanks to our individual donors Mr. Rony Joseph and Mr. Rajpal Singh for their kind support and constant encouragement. Finally we thank our staff and team members for their selfless work in making this workshop a grant success.

Our Founder was the keynote speaker for the rehabilitation program conducted by Cochin Ophthalmological Society at Amrita Hospital, Cochin. The program was attended by many visually challenged people in the rehabilitation field as well as visually challenged college students and employees.

Our Founder spoke about the various rehabilitation programs available for the visually challenged. She shed light on how it is important for the visually challenged to be independent, to use the white cane and to assistive technology in all its forms for a better and easy life. She spoke about Jyothirgamaya and the courses we offer. We hope the visually challenged participants avail our services and we whole heartedly invite them to our organisation. One of our student Ammu.T, was also present at the program and she shared her experience of learning at Jyothirgamaya with audience. We thank Amrita Hospital for inviting our Founder and organising such useful program.

Our Founder actively participated in the onam celebrations of Sneha Sandram Trust where she was honoured with a shawl and memento along with many other distinguished personalities from Kerala.The organisation works for people with intellectual disability in Trivandrum.

We, Jyothirgamaya team thank the Chairpersons and Founders of this organisation for inviting our Founder and honouring her.

Our Founder gave an insightful talk on inclusion at Trivandrum International Airport as a part of Onam celebrations. The program was organised by the Trivandrum International Airport along with Mr. Baby Mathew, Managing Director and Owner of Somatheeram Research Institute, Ayurveda Hospital and Resort in Trivandrum. Our Founder spoke about inclusion in travel and tourism, how airport staff can assist people with disabilities according to their needs.

For instance a visually impaired person does not require a wheel chair while navigating in the airport but he or she may need a sighted guidance to help in through the various procedures like security check, baggage screening, etc.

She also spoke about how we can foster inclusion and treat people with disabilities, the way we ourselves wish to be treated and not to always lay on sympathy but empathy.

We thank Mr.Hari Namboodiri the Chairman of World Malayalee Council, USA for inviting our Founder specially for this program. We also thank Mr. Baby Mathew, Managing Director of Somatheeram Resorts once again for extending this invitation and organising such a program.

Jyothirgamaya Foundation celebrated Independence Day along with Lion’s Club and Christ Nagar School. The flag hoisting was done by Madam Sri Vidhya, the chairman of the Lions Club and she livened up the atmosphere by singing a very catchy number and inviting the entire Jyothirgamaya family to have a group dance and all Jyothirgamaya team members, students and elderly visually impaired members took part in the group dance. The young members of the Lions Club entertained us with a magnificent cultural program comprising of a few songs and so did the Christ Nagar School students. One of the student told us a very heart touching story and a few songs were sung.

Food kits were distributed to 20 Blind people and three of our non teaching staff members. Our two students Mallika and Sheela sang a beautiful song and one of our old student Bincy along with Sheela shared their learning experiences from Jyothirgamaya. We would like to thank our visually challenged students for coming and sharing their experiences and our elderly visually challenged members from different parts of Trivandrum district for accepting our token of love on this auspicious occasion.

We would like to thank our Administrator Mrs. Aruna PS, our Senior Access Technology Trainer and faculty member P.Balraman Sir who spoke about what our organisation stands for and what we do , our supervisor Vinitha and all other team members for putting so much effort into this program.

We thank Lion’s Club and Christ Nagar School students for joining us and interacting with our blind participants. We are also delighted to have our senior advisory member Anandha Sivaram Sir and his wife Madam Shanthi Sivaram who took time to grace the occasion with their presence. They have always supported us in all our endeavours. We really appreciate their support.

We whole heartedly thank the entire Jyothirgamaya team who made this program a great success.

Our Founder, Tiffany Brar was the key note speaker for the IBM conference on INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY, breaking the barriers. She addressed the need for increasing the possibilities of employability of person with disabilities in IBM and in other corporates. She shed light on the high necessities of making websites more accessible. In other words, she emphasized on the fact that the people with disability should have the same effective experience with the web as their non disabled counterparts. For these, she gave a few enlightenment tips on how to make websites accessible. For instance adding alt attributes for images, providing error messages, inform submissions following correctly the web content accessibility guidelines and using the four guiding principles. She also spoke about the challenges faced by the person with disabilities, the three main models that is the charity model, medical and social model and how these three models should be addressed. It was altogether an insightful session and we thank IBM fro inviting our Founder and for extending a hand of collaboration with us.

300-bed residential school for disabled students in Rau. Students from class I to class XII with different disabilities will be admitted in this residential school. Certified teachers and trained staff will be appointed to take care of the students.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/300-bed-residential-school-for-disabled-students-in-rau/articleshow/102000827.cms

Jyothirgamaya spreads its wings to the state of Tamil Nadu, with an orientation and mobility training for 30 Blind people in Nilgri District, Ooty a multilingual and multicultural district known for its natural charm. The 30 Blind people were trained in indoor and outdoor mobility. Jyothirgamaya also distributed 8 canes to deserving needy Blind people during the training program. This training is conducted in collaboration with GARDEN OF SMILES, a well known organisation in Nilgris, working in various charity projects.

We Jyothirgamaya team thank the entire team of GARDEN OF SMILES for their support and coordination for the training program. Also we thanks all the staff, volunteers and the Blind participants who joined their hands with us to make this event a successful one.

We whole heartedly thank Mrs. Uma Kalyani, a well known yoga trainer and nutritionist from Uma’s Nutriyoga for her continuous support and encouragement towards the empowerment of Blind people. She conducted a yoga session for our current residential batch students. She explained the advantages of yoga practice and how to plan for better healthy life style.

We once again thank Mrs.Uma Kalyani for her valuable time and our blind students for making this training a fruitful one.

Our students of the new batch participated in NAMB, the CLIMATE ASSEMBLEY FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH-2023 held at the Kerala Legislative Assembly in honour of World Environment Day in collaboration with UNICEF, India. There were many information sessions on how to preserve our mother Earth.

We Jyothirgamaya Foundation wholeheartedly thank Mr. John for giving such a wonderful opportunity for our students to participate in this event.