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NGO Brief
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Sense International India (SII) was set-up in the year 1997 to respond to the needs of deafblind children and adults in India. SII is a registered trust with Mr. Akhil Paul as its founder Director, and governed by a seven member board of trustees. SII is affiliated to Sense International. SII is the first and only national level organisation with a focused agenda to work with persons with deafblindness & their families and support the development of comprehensive services for deafblind people throughout India. It works with local organizations (mostly NGOs) to develop sustainable services for deafblind children and adults, and collaborates with the government at center and state levels. SII key objective is to provide the information, guidance, support, and training needed along with being committed to helping deafblind people and their families by raising awareness and campaigning for rights, opportunities, and services throughout the nation. SII’s main activity is to provide educational and rehabilitation services to children and adults with deafblindness, which includes screening and assessment of vision and hearing, early intervention, individualized communication and education interventions, vocational training and livelihood support. SII also build capacity of professionals and organizations to work with deafblind persons.
SII with its unique technical knowhow in the field of deafblindness since last eighteen years uses a multi-pronged approach to achieve the project outcomes. This includes technical assistance to its partner NGOs and direct training of their staff to work with deafblind children. SII has specialised expertise in domains of deafblind communication, mobility, accessible information, assistive devices and rehabilitation.
Before inception of SII in 1997, there was only one centre for deafblind people in India, catering to around 23 individuals with deafblindness. Hence, understanding this dire need of reaching out to many more unreached deafblind population, SII successfully developed its innovative approach to initiate and expand services to remote parts of the country with help of network of grass root organizations, and building their capacity to work with deafblind persons making them self reliant. This well planned consistent effort has enabled SII to reach out to more than 65,000 deafblind children and adults in the last eighteen years. The partnership approach of supporting local organizations has resulted into setting of 57 projects in 23 states in a span of 18 years and is one of the most cost effective and innovative model of service delivery for persons with deafblindness.
The impact of this cost effective model is that this does not lead to the creation of new institutions or infrastructure, rather facilitates and enables the stakeholders (like deafblind persons, their families, teachers, NGO partners and government organisations) to learn from each other strategically in developing services for deafblind population without duplication of efforts.
Inclusion of deafblindness in the ‘Rights of Persons with Disability Bill 2011', and inclusion of Rubella vaccination in the national immunization programme are two off the most important recent successes of our advocacy. Based on expertise and experience in the field of deafblindness in India, SII has also successfully initiated its intervention model in Bangladesh and have trained professionals in Malaysia and Nepal.
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