Akila Vaidyanathan puts a tray of brownies down on a table outside Ranjana Singhal’s Café Totaram before she explains why she and her team are there fixing posters, arranging tables and setting up a makeshift stage. On the other side, a young man unpacks colourful paper bags and greeting cards.
Two or three volunteers rush to secure a big poster that has toppled over in the breeze. It shares information about AMAZE, a charitable trust that’s mission is “To help optimise the potential of individuals on the Autism Spectrum and to make them respected and contributing members of the Community”.
Akila is the Founder Director of AMAZE and her husband, Sriram Narayan is Managing Trustee.
Sriram explains that they are trying to find ways of integrating young people with autism into the community. This event today is one way of exploring those possibilities, he says. Their son Nishant is autistic and over the years Akila and Sriram have read up, learnt and discovered ways to better interact and engage with him. They then began to share with others the techniques that worked for them and Nishant to communicate. Their mission is not about the begging bowl and asking for financial help. “Of course we are grateful for the many people who give generously. But Our aim is to see our children integrating into the community and becoming productive members of society.”
And that is why we are here, says Akila. Besides handmade greeting cards, paper bags and coasters there are the brownies, sandwiches, sundal and pav bhaji being sold at the counters. Ranjana Singhal whose idea it was to have the small fete to celebrate the anniversary of Café Totaram says, “These are baby steps. We will try and sell what they make. I will work with my chef and see if we can come up with recipes they can follow easily. And I will spread the word amongst my contacts in the food business.”
Food is one of the ways they hope to integrate, says Sriram. “Someone has just asked us if we can make sundal on order for Dussehra. We can cater for small birthday parties…”
Just then, Nishant comes up to her and uses his iPad to tell his mom that he is in mood for a soup. Akila explains how technology based intervention can make a world of a difference.
She introduced a project called Daksh in Coimbatore that among other things like developing Cognition, Communication and Creativity amongst young children with autism also builds their computer skills. Akila is happy to share that some of these students have been placed in companies and they are doing data entry work and even coding.
In Coimbatore, Colonel A. Sridharan who has set up communities for senior citizens is using the services of the students of Amaze to help him with his office work. “I have documents since 1995 that I need to digitised. That is a repetitive task and these young people do well in that. They are employable in tasks such as these,” he says.
Archana Dange, Eurokids, Tamil Nadu, takes flashcards for her schools that are made by the autistic students. “We use a lot of flashcards in our teaching. We just specified our requirements such as the font, the kind of border, etc. We keep adding new schools and we encourage them to get the flashcards from Amaze too. We regularly order from Amaze who delivers the beautiful cards to us and we laminate and use them well. I just learnt that they also have teaching aids for non-verbal communication and I am wondering now if that will work for us as well.” Akila also shows some of the hundreds of worksheets that her students use to learn new things and says they could easily be used in other schools as well and they are happy to supply them.
“We want to create a methodology that can be replicated in in other schools as well,” says Sriram. The idea he says is to spread the tools and knowledge so that more and more teachers/parents can use those to engage with their wards.
Being techies themselves, Akila and Sriram are developing apps for use by autistic children. “Of course, there is plenty out there, but not so much with an Indian flavour,” says Akila. “We have come out with some easy to use educational apps. We are looking for development partners and someone to sponsor it, may be as part of their CSR,” says Sriram. Our idea is to have sustainable, affordable and relevant-to-our-environment kind of apps that will go a long way in helping these children cope with the real world. We have a large population of Autistic children. The apps will make their lives easier,” he says. Sriram gives the example of an app that will help the children with Indian currency. “They can’t figure it out by themselves. The app will teach them how to use the money.” The apps are ready, but they are hoping someone will partner them on this and take it forward.
Akila and Sriram hope the event at Totaram’s has created some awareness.
As Gokul makes his sandwiches for hungry visitors and Mithilesh plays music for them, more people wander in wondering what the hullabuloo is all about. The Amaze team tries its best to tell them about Autism. “We feel with a little understanding, patience and awareness, not just those in the autism spectrum, but also with other special needs will be able to hold their own outside their homes and in their community and the world,” says Akila.
To know more: Contact Amaze at 97918 23043/90251 22233/70940 23043
Email them at:amaze1209@gmail.com
Visit: www.amazetrust.org
