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In India's map, Gurgaon is one of the most progressive cities in the National Capital Region in the periphery of Delhi. However, there has been an evident lack of specialized services, in the region, especially for persons with mental and multiple disabilities. Moreover, a daily commute to New Delhi, from Gurgaon, for these differently-abled children, is neither pragmatic nor conducive to their environment. About 16 years back, this core problem was identified by a few spirited individuals who were touched by such crisis in some form or the other. They came together to provide a professionally equipped facility for care, development and education, for children with mental and multiple disabilities, and in particular for those with acute impairment within Gurgaon.

Pioneers in Gurgaon, Khushboo Welfare Society caters to all segments of the society be it poor or rich with quality services. Though today there are other similar private centers or regular schools with special wings, Khushboo still remains the only centre which provides multiple services (both therapeutic and educational / vocational) to cater to all kinds of patients and students. Regular schools with special wings take mostly 'trainable' children while most of Khushboo children are severely challenged. Khushboo is also well known for its rural intervention programs where it conducts workshops at village level on various subjects related to disability to equip rural caregivers with knowledge and information.

Ad hoc external funding and high operational cost

The funding for the operations of Khushboo as a whole, which is always a challenge, is arranged from a wide spectrum of sources, which vary from time to time.

Usually, they find that it is not as difficult to find donors for creation of hard infrastructure, or such invoice based hardware acquisitions, or visible goods and articles, as to convince major donors to support the recurring operational costs. These costs for their kind of disabilities and the versatility of operations are quite high - as much as INR 5,000 per child per month as a whole. Operations such as of Khushboo, which entail a high per capita operating cost, can never reach complete self-sustainability, and would always depend on contributions from various outside sources.

Teacher attrition of special educators

A student at KWS bonds with a special educator over extended periods of time, and as it happens in most cases, many years. Retaining their teachers is of utmost importance and challenge to them. Most importantly, the teacher: student ratios in their class rooms happen to be very low, at about 1:4, depending on the class, with an assistant teacher/ stipendary assistant. KWS strives to maintain their salary structure on par with the market levels in Gurgaon.

Most of the funding that KWS receives is earmarked for specific programs or is one-time infrastructure related. Asha for Education is one of the few funding organizations that supports recurring expenses of teacher salaries.

Motivation and inclusion of parents in school activities

Parental support is extremely crucial for the success of the program. Most of their class room teaching is therapeutic in nature. They organize various motivational camps, and also events focusing on help and guidance to parents, dealing with real world issues like adolescence in the children, etc.

Working in a field where success is defined in a totally different manner, Khushboo treats each special child as someone truly special and works with each one on an individual basis.

Here are a few “success” stories. Detailed case studies can be found here

• Abhimanyu - He came to Khushboo as a 4 yr-old boy, in his mother’s lap, and completely dependent on his mother for almost all the functions of daily living. He is now functionally more capable, uses his upper limbs effectively to maintain sitting posture; is completely mobile by crawling on his knees and has even started taking a few steps with manual support or with the help of a rollator. He deserves to be on his own feet like any other child, for which his goals include intensive training and continued physical therapy for development of healthy gait for walking, along with emphasis on special education covering life skills.

• Deepanshu - Couldn’t walk properly, nor could he speak even a single word; couldn't hold a pencil to write. Child of an alcoholic father, the family could not bear the expenses of his education at Khushboo. It took hard convincing, including home-visits, to make the family bring him to KWS for the much needed specialists' intervention. Khushboo waived off all fees, and also provided with free school-bus facility. Now, he can express his needs verbally with his still not-so-clear speech. Physiotherapy has improved his body-balance. He can write with a pencil; his overall academic level has also improved. Loves to play cricket; participated in State Level Special Olympics. Now he is a very confident and cheerful boy.

• Sony Kumari - All her developmental milestones were delayed. But her special needs could be identified only after she had to be withdrawn from the mainstream school, because of her very poor performance. She was able to recognize only alphabets and numbers up to 100. Special education was provided on a carefully drafted plan. The success lay in identifying and developing also her 'different' abilities, like creative arts and crafts, and encouraging her to excel in them. She can now read, write small sentences, and do simple arithmetic calculations; has even started trying to type on a computer. She has learnt many skills in creative arts and craft activities, like Rangoli, Flower arrangement, drawing and painting, and is a regular winner in Inter-school competitions.

• Rekha Sachdeva - She was very poor in oral communication and language skills, and had poor eye-hand coordination. Belonged to a socially challenged family with father - a low income daily-wager, an intellectually challenged elder brother, and mother trying to make family's ends meet, they tended to neglect the need to train Rekha at Khushboo. It took hard convincing about the need for specialist care, even by visiting their home, to bring her to Khushboo. She was put on extensive training in vocational stream. All her fees, including that for the school-bus, were waived. Eventually she was employed in Khushboo as a Stipendiary Assistant, to train others in kitchen and household chores. She could not achieve any academic capabilities, but she excelled in doing many household chores. She is a great support for her family, to run their home while the mother baby-sits for others. Her stipend from Khushboo helps add to family income too. She is a familiar face at Khushboo, welcoming visitors with drinks, tea and snacks with a smiling face. She can travel independently by public auto-rickshaws. There is also marked improvement in her speech and language skills.

• Monu Allahabadi - Had deficits in all functional areas due to severe disabilities - was not able to sit up properly, had poor eye-hand coordination, and was very poor in language skills. He underwent extensive training program determined from detailed assessments and regular reviews. Now he is able to walk independently. He can go up and down the stairs with some struggle to overcome his poor balance. Eye-hand coordination has improved. He can string beads into necklaces. With improvement in speech and language, he can communicate his needs using a few words and a lot of gestures. His dependence on others for his daily life activities is also reduced.

Khushboo Welfare Society addresses fulfilling the needs of children challenged with Mental and Multiple Disabilities for their development, functional education, care, vocational engagement, in a professional and holistic manner through a range of its structured programs. A detailed site visit report from Asha for Education, Austin can be found here.

Blessings - for which WAH's support is proposed is the platform for providing 'Special Functional Education' for children with mental challenges, in schooling age (6-18 years) who cannot be assimilated in the normal education system. The School has served scores of children over 16 years of its existence, as a unique institution in its area. It started with less than 10 children in 1995, and today it has about 70 children on its rolls. With the holistic training they receive, which aims to maximize the potential of each such differently-abled children, they are equipped to face further life with greater empowerment and dignity.

Since its inception, KWS has been growing steadily. Khushboo’s strength lies in developing a wholesome and good quality infrastructure over the years, with
• KWS has four established programs that cater to the needs of the mentally disabled children from infancy to 30 years or more. Sparsh (early intervention program for infants to 6 years), Blessings (academic school program for children of 6-18 years), Samarth (vocational training program for adolescents and youth (18-30+ years), and Samvedan (special program for children with profound disabilities).
• A professionally designed and constructed special purpose disabled friendly building, play areas, which are also aesthetically and hygienically maintained.
• Well-trained teachers, therapists and support staff
• Well equipped usage infrastructure - classrooms, laboratories, workshops and therapeutic clinics, and utilities.
• A good school-bus service, with helpers trained for handling children with disabilities
• Promoting awareness about the need for community's acceptance of children and people with disabilities as their equal.
• Social advocacy efforts in streamlining the entire process of obtaining the disability certificate at Chief Medical Officer, Gurgaon
• Participation in awareness efforts at the government level through training of officials about special needs
• Participation of Corporates, the main-stream education system, and the people in society at large, to promote effective absorption of the challenged as their equals.
• And, not in the least … a team of devoted volunteers involved in managing this charitable, not-for-profit organization, with Care, Compassion and Commitment.

Khushboo Welfare Society does keep dreaming, seriously thinking, planning or implementing the schemes for, vertical and horizontal diversification expansion, or up-grading their operations.

Some of the recent plans are:
• In the current year 2011-12, Khushboo has decided to substantially raise the remuneration levels of qualified trained staff to reduce attrition, and to be able to raise the quality of new entrants. The hike in salaries is in commensurate to the minimum market expectations for healthy sustenance and growth. It is important to retain the educators and care-givers, as they share a special bond with Khushboo's children. Most student-teacher relationships lasting over a significant period of the student's stay are important for maximizing the confidence level of the child to learn and for maximizing his/her potential.
• Their community based rehabilitation program (CBR), initiated on a pilot basis a year ago, to take their professionalism to the doorsteps of those who can't reach them, especially in the rural areas in the interior, will be one of their thrust areas. The success of the program would lie in promoting the direct hands-on participation of the families and the communities, to provide an environment and means for care and development of children with disabilities, and self-help based care and training groups for purposeful rehabilitation.
• After, covering 2 villages in the year 2010 as part of their community based rehabilitation program (CBR), they are taking the program to one more village this year. From the 35 persons with various kinds of disabilities identified by door-to-door survey in the 2 villages, 15 with mental disabilities were brought under Khushboo's CBR program. They are being provided regular on-site physiotherapy, developmental and special education services by their CBR team. Khushboo also brings them in for specialist medical clinical consultations and therapeutic interventions as required.
• Increasing the intake capacity of their programs
• Continuous enhancement of their therapeutic infrastructure - in technology and range.
• Khushboo has also introduced a bridge program, to transition the kids from Sparsh (OPD) to the regular academics or special education. This program would also help extend the intervention program at the earliest possible age of the child - a vital step needed for most cases.