Urmi Foundation

Supported by: Wipro Cares

About Urmi

Urmi Foundation aims at three core areas via its grassroots-level interventions in disability: Identification; Intervention; and Mainstreaming. Urmi Foundation specifically works with children with developmental disabilities like autism, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) and other permanent disabilities. Urmi tries to reduce its intensity by its planned and tailor-made intervention. Urmi implements its model/program in Mumbai and Thane currently, but is willing to expand it to other regions of Maharashtra.

Projects

Over 50% of the special children do not achieve their full academic potential due to apathy towards education and lack of support by the parents. BMC (Brihan Mumbai Corporation) too pays limited and sometimes no attention to their special schools and fails to provide infrastructural and educational facilities. Urmi Foundation tries to address challenges noted with the BMC special education department, anganwadis, communities, special children and their families through its programs across Mumbai and Thane.

Urmi’s program includes special education, therapeutic intervention (Art Therapy, Speech Therapy, Behavior Modification Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Counseling), and capacity building workshops with the BMC special education department and with parents having special children. We implement our program with 25 special schools (13 community schools, 12 BMC special schools). We also work with anganwadis and train their teachers to detect disability at an early stage and enroll for Urmi’s early intervention program i.e. community school.

For youth who pass out from Urmi’s schools after 18 years of age, we have designed vocational training program “Mini MBA” program, which aims at self-employment and entrepreneurship among the special youth. Till date, Urmi has formed 5 self-help groups and is about to form 8 more that will employ over 300 disabled youth.

This year, Urmi formed a committee of 9 prominent people from the field of special education and social sector, and drafted a model aiming at replicating Urmi’s work with multiple special schools working with low income communities of different regions of Maharashtra. This model avoids the medical tone. It is drafted as a social intervention mode allowing people to support special children to develop their personal, social, recreational, academic, and vocational skills.

We have a team of special educators and psychologists to implement our program. We also have an impact assessment tool giving numerical and qualitative outcomes of every program that we implement.

The approach

Our programs are designed to address following core areas:  Disability awareness; Disability prevention; Disability identification; Disability intervention; Disability Mainstreaming.

The implementation process has the following steps: Hiring and teachers training; Individual and school assessment; Activity plan and actual implementation; End Line test and evaluation.

Locations

Ghatkopar, Bhandup, Kamathipura, Mumbai Central, Mulund, Mumbra, Chembur, Govandi, Mankhurd, Parel, Worli, Santacruz, Dharavi.