TMCnet News
DY Patil's gift to visually-impaired [DNA : Daily News & Analysis (India)](DNA : Daily News & Analysis (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Belapur: A group of 30 business management students of DY Patil School of Management in Belapur have taken a task to create hundred of entrepreneurs from a village where majority of the population is either visually-impaired or have some kind of physical deficiencies. These students have taken up the challenge as part of the social responsibility. The first of the initiative is on November 1, when the group hold a musical event to raise fund for the visually-impaired. Interestingly, all the performers of the musical event are the visually-impaired from the village. Vangani, a village near Badlapur in Thane, has a population of around 1,000 and unfortunately majority of the villagers have lost their eye sight or are hearing-impaired or mentally challenged. According to the management school, around 400 couples are blind in the village and have to completely rely on others for their daily livelihood. "Majority of them sell various items in train to meet their daily expenses. This is really very unfortunate," said Dr Rashmi Gopinathan, in charge of the group. She adds, "We are working on our vision which is 'From possibility to progress, we visualise they realise'." The students group will choose 15 people from the village and accordingly train them in making paper bowl, paper plates, paper jewellery and shoe box. All these items will be sold in the market. Later, part of the profit will be invested in the project again, so that their small effort may take the form of a company in the later stage. The group will also teach these villagers some marketing etiquette so that they understand the business module of the product. "We can not support them for the whole of their life, so they have to understand all these things," adds Dr Gopinathan. After successful training of a batch of 15 people from the village, the students will take another group of villagers and train them in other activities. "We spent around two months' time to find people who really need help," said Sonia Justin, another in charge of the group. At present, the group is looking at corporates for funds to start the project. "We are in touch with many companies who have shown interest in helping these villagers. We will be just instrumental to help the needy," added Justin. In the last academic year, students worked with women from Bhandara in Vidarbha and their project called 'Tasar - A Journey from Cocoon to Cloth' received huge response from the corporate world such as KPMG, Mahindra Groups, Tata chemicals, Wal-Mart. Credit:Amit Srivastava (c) 2014 @ 2014 DILIGENT MEDIA CORPORATION LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |