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The school where blind children become musicians |
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The Ashram In Phagwara, Punjab, North India - on the famous GT Road- stands the Ashram. The Ashram is the only project of its kind in India - a residential music academy and training school for blind children founded, funded and managed by blind people. The Ashram accommodates 80 little blind people, and fifteen paid staff, including, teachers, music professors, administrators, medical staff, and many wonderful volunteers. There is also a Sikh temple, the 'gurdwara', within the Ashram grounds. Our little blind people The histories of our little blind people are often tragic: orphaned, discarded, or worse. The Ashram exists for these children, to provide a safe, loving and nurturing environment in which the children receive an invaluable education, learn to cope with their blindness, integrate into a sighted world and flourish there. As part of a program to ensure that blind and sighted children learn to be perfectly at ease with one another, the Ashram also accommodates a number of sighted orphans living in the complex, and pays for their education at a local school for sighted children. In the evening they return to the Ashram to play, sing and laugh with their blind friends. The Ashram’s children are profoundly happy and joyful beings, they are respected and understood, and they learn skills which will ensure them a far brighter future than their circumstances in India would otherwise have allowed. All photographs © Sundeep Sitara www.sundeepsitara.co.uk |
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© www.littleblindpeople.com 2008 |
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