C. R. Ranganathan Residential School for Deaf (Shri Sadguru Saibaba Seva Trust)

Supported by: Wipro Cares

About CR Ranganathan Residential School for Deaf

With the aim to help needy, poor, and hard of hearing children, to establish equality for all religions and to educate, develop, and to rehabilitate the hard of hearing children, Shri. V. B. Patole, the Chairman with his kind efforts started, C. R. Ranganathan Residential School for Deaf in 1993. The main initiatives of the organization are:

• To provide comprehensive education for Hard-of-Hearing students of C. R. Ranganathan Residential School for the Deaf. This encourages independence and life-long learning to promote social development and cultural awareness.

• To prepare students to attain their potential and become contributing members of the community.
• Rehabilitation of the Hard-of-Hearing students by providing job competence.
• Overall development of Hard-of-Hearing students, so that they do not lag behind and survive as good as normal children.

The Approach

For most of the children, their hearing impairment is a congenital condition – they are born with severe or total deafness. Speaking is a challenge that many of the students are working on. Nearly all of the teachers are able to hear normally. They teach in a holistic manner using sign language, speaking, and writing. Classrooms for the primary class students are equipped with hearing aids, which are connected to a central system. All of our school students have the hearing aid that makes the sounds louder so that these children can listen, communicate, and participate more fully in their daily activities. There is a dedicated hearing and speech therapist at the school. They test all the children and equip them with the necessary tools to improve their hearing and speech.

• The school serves as an educational and social center of the Deaf community.
• Early intervention ensures stronger learning experiences. Our institute is engaged in putting continuous efforts in early intervention and identification of the students below 5 years of age.
• Each classroom is equipped with e-learning set wherein the topics of all the subjects from Class 1^st to Class 10^th are made available. The teachers can teach any of the topics at any time. With the help of attractive images, animated pictures, and 3D videos, it becomes simple for the students to learn and understand the particular concept of a topic.
• There is 3% reservation for these students in government jobs that remain vacant due to unavailability of eligible/undergraduate candidates. Our organization has opened the doors of higher education and provides trainings through competitive exam guidance centers for these students to become eligible for jobs and be independent.
• The education and rehabilitation of hard of hearing children between the ages of 3-18 years is done by the school with the arrangement of food, uniform, and accommodation facility.
• The provision of all requisites necessary for the education of these students is done by the school through a scientific method of self-contribution and donation.
• Presently the institute serves 445 hard of hearing students including the school, junior college, senior college, and D.Ed. College. This includes children from remote locations, poor families, and slum areas.
• The institute gets grant in aid from state government for 75 students. The expenditure of food, uniform, cost of living and other necessities in day-to-day life of remaining students is borne by the Institute and Wipro Cares together.

Location

The school is located at 161/13, Adarsha Colony, Tingrenagar (Vishrantwadi), Pune 411015, Maharashtra.

Plan for Next 1-3 Years

• To develop expert teachers by providing in-house training of Indian Sign Language. We have giving basic training of ISL to our faculties and we are in touch with the training provider institute, AYJNIHH, Bandra for further training programs.
• As these students (especially junior and senior college students) mostly understand the language of their peers, we are trying to find the faculties who are deaf by themselves.
• To start skill development center once new setup is owned.
• In the proposed year we will be focusing more on TY students to achieve success in competitive exams by sharing various government job opportunities displayed in newspapers, government job websites, and thereby preparing them as per requirements
• Experts’ guidance on academics as well as non-academics through collaboration with various institutes.
• Our institute aims to be inclined even more towards child-centric phenomenon. Considering the learning style of these students, our organization is planning to develop a self-study software, which will enhance their learning skills.
• Presently, we are running our institute with a very limited space. For classes above 11^th, we have to book places on rent. We are therefore planning to shift the whole setup at one place. This will also help us to accommodate the students taking higher education by providing them hostel facilities.