Under the PWD Act – 1995, the state is required to provide for rehabilitation, education, economic opportunities, barrier free environment and other supporting services so as to facilitate the integration of persons with disabilities in mainstream society. The Government has made progress in this direction, however, we’ve got miles to go.
As per Karnataka’s policy on disability, 2007 Women and Child Development Department will be the Nodal Department and the office of the Commissioner for Person with Disabilities will co- ordinate and monitor the programmes and schemes for persons with disabilities. It gives importance for Inclusive Education for CWSN (Children With Special Needs) through Education in mainstream schools.
With the above goals in mind, in February 2017 few like-minded special educators came together to form a Whats-app group to discuss the vision of inclusive education. What started off as a small Whats-app group grew in no time to more than 250 rehabilitation professionals.
Members used this platform to extend their knowledge as well as network. The data-base generated helped in accumulating area-wise information of available special educators and rehab professionals. This later extended to sharing advice, best practices and techniques thereby creating an ocean of ideas to assist our children. Rehab professionals across the city would share their success stories, their struggles, their contacts, etc creating an army of like-minded professionals.
The sense of community needed a legal and formal place; this led to Registration of a not for profit society today known as “Special Educators’ and Rehabilitation Professionals’ Association – Karnataka (SERPA)” in February 2018 . With the society registered and a gamut of special educators signing in, we soon began our roles as change-makers!
To enable the special educators and Rehabilitation professionals with knowledge power, SERPA began various online sessions in December, 2018. These included veterans from various areas of specializations sharing their knowledge so as to enable participants to extend their knowledge in the field and be able to assist parents in identifying not just the concerns of the child with special needs but also reach out to appropriate specialists. Few important sessions were also conducted face-to-face. While all the formal sessions are beneficial, the core of SERPA is to build a community; keeping this in mind SERPA hosts “SERPA over Cuppa” – an informal meeting to enable professionals discuss their cases and bring light success stories and techniques that worked.
SERPA other than networking within the professionals also took to the street where a rally was conducted to bring awareness to wheelchair access in Bangalore city. SERPA intends to work along with government agencies and other NGOs to work towards the vision of inclusion.
Since 2020, SERPA majorly operates as a Telegram group with over 400 members in our network. We now have people from outside India also joining forces. Let’s make this humble effort a successful one! Join hands with SERPA – Join the community!