Fight against hunger
In India, being a disabled child means bringing bad luck, being a leftover and unworthy of consideration. In India, being a disabled child’s mother means being cursed and, in most cases, ending up alone without any help, watching your child’s disease getting worse and worse day by day.
The living conditions of disabled people in India, in particular those of the female part of society, violate many basic human rights. Disabled women and girls (44% of all disabled people in India) cannot access proper medical treatments, benefit supporting services nor improve their own independence through socio-economic reintegration tools. They are therefore destined to a life of marginalisation, discrimination and suffering.
Pratikhya, which in local language means “hope”, is an accommodating centre for disabled girls with serious impairments of cognitive capacities. It is the only centre of this kind in the district of Balasore in the Orissa state. It was opened in 2000 and is currently run by the Daughters of San Camillo. The centre does not only meet the hosts’ essential needs, but also provide them with specific school courses and all services that enable disable people to reach their own potential, being it health assistance, physiotherapy, sport, yoga, etc.
Girls and women in Pratikhya all have a balanced diet and appropriate to their age and physical and health condition.
Many of them take a pharmacological therapy, which needs a particular nutritional care. In order to guarantee a balanced diet to the centre’s hosts, a €1 daily fee per person is required. The intervention beneficiaries are 41 girls with mental disability aged 2-23, who suffer from various genetic pathologies or syndromes such as Down, autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intellectual disability of unknown origin. Most of them are orphans.
PRO.SA Foundation supports the purchase of rice, milk, flours, chicken, vegetables, eggs and fish, as it is prevented in the nutritional programs for both Pratikhya centre and Fr. Tezza Special School – Home for disabled children in Mananthavady, Kerala State. This school is managed by the same order of nuns and it accommodates 126 disabled girls, 64 of which live there.
