Diya Foundation

Diya Foundation provides education in life skills and employability skills to adults with intellectual challenges. It seeks to create a safe environment where intellectually challenged adults with a basic school programme could move into and be prepared to meet life's challenges through work and employment. Skills including personal grooming and hygiene, household and financial management, personal and social, occupational guidance are provided.

Major Interventions:

Financial Literacy: The NGO trains people in budgeting skills; apportioning money into four important parts - supporting their families, personal care, giving back to the community and saving for the future - a work in progress that helps them to dream about the future and save as well as looking beyond just themselves and their needs by finding someone to support in the community.

Family Counselling: Family sessions are conducted to build through different topics and issues suggested by parents such as Eating Healthy; Fear and Anxiety; Behaviour problems and modifications etc. Math N Money, a short term course is conducted over 16 sessions plus a pre assessment and post assessment session. During these sessions the trainer introduce concepts through challenging, creative and thoughtful activities to increase proficiency in related concepts using everyday experiences and household items.

Employment: Training on various skills given in-house prepare the adults with disability to work with strengths and charter a path to livelihood in the future. Students reach a level of productivity and capability to maintain daily targets, understand product quality, importance of working as a team member to complete an order, and are then profiled and interviewed and considered for placement in a supported environment.

The ultimate goal is to ensure employment opportunities for the trainees within safe environments in the community. Diya plans to network with NGOs and Corporates to identify placements in hotels, offices and other establishments. The challenge is to find simple, repetitive and achievable tasks.

Art Therapy: A pilot program was initiated during the last year with sponsored funds to enhance self-expression and build self-employment for Diya students.

Personal Safety And Sex Education: Understanding how to communicate with their children regarding understanding their bodies and how it functions, maintaining personal boundaries etc. Additionally within the course the parents and students shares experiences. These discussions serve to increase the bond between the participants and their parents and provides them a platform to freely share sensitive information and experiences.