Ammi - Reaching heights!

Ammi is a 19 year old orphan girl with intellectual impairment. Today she presents herself as a confident and an independent girl with reasonably good independent living skills. It is 10 years of tireless journey that has enabled her to blossom to this level of independency….

Ammi was one of the 5 children from Guild of Service, which had requested Swayamkrushi an NGO in Hyderabad to give shelter and habilitate. The team which went to Guild of Service to meet the children, could not resist the charm of Ammi. “She with her sparkling eyes and alluring smile won our hearts” and became one of the four children to come to the new home-Swayamkrushi. The journey embarked on 05 -07-2000, the date-of joining.

Ammi has very good motor skills and yet was dependent for her daily living activities. She had good receptive language but had inappropriate expressive language with articulation problem as well as rudimentary social skills. The biggest challenge was to manage her behavior problems. She had attention seeking behavior, would throw tantrums, would h abuses at her peers, and would defecate on the floor of the toilet and not on the commode. It was not an easy task to habilitate her.

The tireless efforts of the special educators and caretakers under the guidance of Ms.Manjulaa Kalyaan coupled with effective behavior management strategies helped her to transform into a productive member of the society. Ammi had no aptitude towards education hence more emphasis was laid on developing employability skills. Functional academics were introduced and she was put on vocational training.

Within a span of 5 years, she picked up sight vocabulary of survival words, personal belongings and provisions which was reinforced at the group home where she lived. She learnt tailoring skills, weighing, sealing and stacking, paper bag making and so on. In a nut shell she learnt to work in a team.

The first breakthrough towards economic empowerment came through in the year 2001 when she was selected and recruited at FOOD WORLD. She worked there for a period of two years. She was then moved to Taj Krishna Hotel on a higher salary. She made a name for herself there. She became the most loved person in the department of housekeeping. However, due to several reasons could not continue there.

She also worked in the packaging unit of Ratnadeep which is supermarket with lots of branches.

Presently, she has moved back to the tailoring unit of Swayamkrushi. She has become proficient in cutting cloth using a template, hand embroidery, stitching of bags and other products.

She also assists the special educators wherever necessary. Recently, at the 9 days sports camp held at Gachibowli, she assisted the special educator in taking care of Swayamkrushi students.

Swayamkrushi also nurtured her leisure time skills of singing, dancing, playing in-door and out -door games by giving her an opportunity to participate in inter-school cultural events and at Special Olympics.

She participated in the NCC camps and Republic Day parade for 7 consecutive years. She has won many accolades for Swayamkrushi She represented AP in UMANG festival at Delhi which was organized as a part of Republic Day Parade in the year 2004. She stayed at Delhi for 26 days and that was a major turning point in her life. There was no looking back for her. She represented AP at various state level, national level and International level of Special Olympics. The latest being Special Olympics held at Greece in 2011 Ammi’s transformation is not complete. Ammi’s ambition is to head a group home. Few years down, we are sure her ambition will come true. Ammi is a true inspiration for many more students and special educators.