Differently-abled kids to get training in hospitality

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 17

In order to enable differently-abled students to stand up on their feet, a city-based NGO, in collaboration with a hospitality institute is going to provide a formal training to them in hospitality.

The NGO, Ashirwad, runs a school for special children and they are employed at Sashakt Canteen at the district administrative complex. The NGO, along with \/a hospitality institute, will help the students to train in the industry.

Speaking about it, Dr Neelam Sodhi, an NGO member said, the duration of the course will be for six months and the curriculum has been developed. It would be started by June this year, she said. She also said such courses would be a milestone because it would enable differently-abled children to become professionally trained.

As the pace of such students who have several mental disabilities, the training would be tailored to their learning pace, learning-pattern. Teaching them was different as they were given repeated instructions about the same things. Even simple tasks needed to be broken into small parts for them so that they could cope and learn. That is what we have been able to achieve at Sashakt canteen in a year. They showed a lot of improvement,” she said.

The idea behind this course is to provide them training so that they can actually step in the mainstream, and become independent, and not keep working in a sheltered environment. If they are able to stand up for themselves, and able to earn in the mainstream, it gives them a sense of self-esteem, a social role and meaning, rather than getting wasted doing nothing in homes under the ‘bechara’ tag. It also brings a huge mental relief for their parents also, she further said.