Association of People with Disability, The (APD)

Association of People with Disability, The (APD) is transforming thousands of lives of differently abled people through comprehensive rehabilitation and therapeutic services, supported financially by diverse corporate and not-for-profit organisations and medically supported by all leading hospitals in Bengaluru. APD visions to create world where equity, dignity and justice are assured for people with disability.

Main Programmes:

• Early Intervention: APD promotes child’s age-appropriate growth and development and support families during the early critical years thereby ensuring early detection, intervention, equal opportunities and social inclusion for the children. An integrated approach is followed with the parent in the child’s life.  APD formulates individualized family support plan (IFSP) in consultation with parents, build the capacity and sensitize stakeholders such as ASHA, Anganwadi, doctors, nurses, parents, caregivers, and communities to build a sustainable ecosystem. It caters to various needs of a child and provides need-based rehabilitation services on a case to case basis.
• Inclusive Education: APD has three focus areas under this:
  • Providing comprehensive education: This is the overall development of a child including counselling, rehab (speech or physiotherapy), surgical intervention, fitment of mobility aids, providing assistive devices, as well as academic and confidence building, etc., skills. The Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) teachers, individually or in a group, support teachers as facilitators.
  • Building an ecosystem to promote inclusive education: Extensive capacity building is done for school teachers, peers, parents and siblings, and relevant stakeholders. A lot of sensitization and counselling of family members for parents are done to bring their child to school. At the school, APD works with teachers and peers, provides teaching materials, infrastructural support, teaching methodology as well as curriculum adaptation for children with special needs.
  • Working with the education department. It supports the government department in the locality to get enrolments and assist with sustaining the quality of education for children with special needs.
• Livelihood: Assisting PwDs for gainful and sustainable employment in the mainstream workforce. Particular focus is on PwDs who drop out of the formal education system and are therefore excluded from Government and Non-governmental organization’s programs. APD is committed to achieve and exceed 40% women participation in the program. It includes community mobilization, training and placement. As part of this program, it also identifies candidates (through the recruitment unit) and provides them job-appropriate training for placement in the government or private sector. The curriculum is jointly developed with training partners, tailor-made to the needs of selected employers. Besides, trainings in horticulture, nurseries, community, landscaping, floriculture, tissue culture and other non-formal courses are provided.

Additionally, APD is also engaged into providing rehabilitation services to such people with disabilities.