Aai Day care to the rescue

I,Mrs.Swati Mahendra Mohite, am the founding trustee of AAI DAY CARE SANSTHA,PEN,  was a nondescript, newly happily married housewife till July 1993, when Chaitali was born to me. In a couple of months, we were shell shocked to realise that Chaitali was born an over -90% Cerebral Palsy child. Initial despondency over, my husband Mahendra and I began our arduous visits to Mumbai in rickety public transport buses with Chaitali in arms, to neurologists to learn about her condition and ways to mitigate the same and  to ensure her welfare.Consultation led to the conclusion that intellectually challenged kids can't be brought up and rehabilitated properly without specialised education. So, I immediately decided to complete b.Ed in Special Education. Once that was done, I started rearing my beautiful baby girl with my specialized knowledge. We were totally oblivious of the fact that the incidence of intellectual disability was a huge problem in many families even in a very small town like Pen. As people got to know about my successful efforts to help Chaitali overcome her disability to a reasonable extent, requests started poring in to utilise my knowledge to help many such children lead reasonably good life. I readily  agreed and took four challenged kids under my wings in my small home. Similar requests began to grow exponentially and we realised that we need to find bigger accommodation for our informal day care centre and that we need to purchase specialised equipment and teaching and learning aids and hire specialised professional to provide services like physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy. We soon found out that most parents were not in a position to afford to contribute enough to bear the cost of equipment, teaching and learning aids and salaries of special teachers and professionals.The expenses were beyond our private means.But it would be inhuman to refuse the services to the innocent children and their parents just because they couldn't afford to pay.We took wise people in the town into confidence regarding our predicament. They advised that the only way out was to source social philanthropy and to register a public trust to take care of the exponentially growing affairs of the day care center. I followed the advice and a public trust named Aai Day Care Sanstha came into being in 2010. Neck deep into facing the challenge of managing everything from toilet training to behavioural abnormalities of the kids, I was learning to enlarge my motherhood now to around 15 children and that was a humbling  and divine experience. I was able to earn trust of individual, institutional and corporate donors in my efforts due to transparency and  professional approach in management of the centre. Today, I have succeeded in constructing a 4-floor fully equipped building that houses a 40-bed residential facility for male and female challenged students, a day care school and 1000 sq ft vocational training and production centre. Although the State Government has given licence on ' permanently non-grant ' basis, a 32 member staff is employed to take care of 68 students, 12 of whom are hostel inmates.     

My vocational training and production facility creates earhen decorative lamps, candles, artificial flowers, jewellery, paper and cloth bags, Rakhis, saree folders etc which are sold at stalls at malls, schools, handicraft exhibitions and  the sale proceeds are proportionally credited to bank accounts of the students so that they can develop self respect, economic self reliance and earn a sense of responsibility towards their poor families. My staff addresses sensitisation sessions at schools, community events and visit other schools to give vocational training as well. I appeal to socially minded persons and organizations to support us financially by contributing to expenditure on salary, purchase of educational material, equipment, raw material for production facility, grocery and other consumables for hostel kitchen, office equipment,  educational aids like interactive boards,sport equipment and most importantly, sponsorship for tuition and transport fees of needy students. I will be very happy to receive help of doctors, psychologists, therapists, counsellors for our students and their parents.

I have been striving for the last 15 years  to do as much as possible to make the lives of my children secure and meaningful. I feel vindicated and satisfied each time  I see their brimming faces as they earn trophies at sport and cultural competitions, tell a coherent story and present delightful dance and song performances.