Chennai, June 24: Children with developmental disabilities hinge on for support to perform their day to day activities involving self-care, social communication, education and vocational functionalities. Many special schools concentrate more on imparting and improvising the life skills of those children, but those children who mostly come from backward classes and economically weaker sections should also be socially protected to lead a quality life. They also need sufficient training to start with a career.
As an initiative Rajalakshmi Engineering College (REC) in 2016 developed an e-kit ITAAC funded by Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST), specially meant for teaching and training life skills for autistic students.
Taking this initiative as positive note, the Mechanical Engineering Department at REC on Saturday (June 24, 2017) started an vocational training program on carpentry, fitting, machining, plumbing, etc., for physically challenged and autistic students so that they could gain livelihood skills to protect themselves in society and lead an independent living.
This certification program is offered free of cost.
Prof. S.P. Srinivasan, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department and mentor for the training programme said that a team of faculty and staff from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at REC will be supporting this program. The certification from the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) of Government of India for this training programme would help them in their career growth.
It is a One Month program with a batch size of 25 Autistic syndrome and disabled students.
“We did a pilot programme during April this year for a set of 15 students, based on the success and feedback from them we have initiated this one month training programme now,” Prof. Srinivasan said.
“We plan to include some more courses like welding, autocad, molding etc., in future based on the performance of these students during the training programme. Our College management also plans to provide placement assistance for these trained students thereby facilitating livelihood for them,” he added.
While inaugurating the programme on Saturday (June 24, 2017), Mr R. Panneerselvam, Principal Director, MSME Technology Development Centre, Agra appreciated REC for the good attempt the college had done in launching this training programme, thereby giving back to the society.
“MSME will extend our support to all such activities that REC does. We should also think bigger and try to create a big record,” he said.
Mr Ganesh Thirunavukkarasu, senior manager (HR), Campus Lead (Tamilnadu & Puducherry) at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that REC had committed to give back to the society as TCS too had done.
Mrs Parvathy Viswanath of Aikya foundation, an organisation which helps to promote the welfare and interests of children with Autism, ADHD, Down syndrome and specific learning disabilities, with which REC collaborates to train their students, said that it had been her long time dream to have this kind of training programme for their students and REC had realised her dream by providing this training programme.