Ekvira Multipurpose Foundation (EMFA) was established with the objective of providing early age rehabilitation to hearing impaired children. Its aim is to give every hearing impaired child the chance to listen, learn and speak, thus enabling him to be an active part of our essentially hearing and speaking world. EMFA provides speech-hearing language training from an early age and also the necessary training and capacity building to parents of deaf children to take ownership and be committed to advocate for the rights of their children. It strives to provide deaf children an equal opportunity to be integrated into society and not be neglected for lack of hearing.
BalVikas Kendra and Special School
EMFA runs a Center and Special School of oral-aural rehabilitation, and a general school for children under 10 years of age. BalVikas is for speech hearing, language and pre-school training and it also has a parents training center at Akola. During FY16, EMFA supported 50 families of deaf children. It helped 41 hearing impaired students make a transition from BalVikas Kendra and BalVikas Vishesh Shala into general schools and 13 more beneficiaries will be doing the same in the coming year. In FY16, the early age center had 25 hearing impaired kids and the school had 25 such kids and had 45 mothers regularly attending the centers along with their child.
EMFA aims to be a one stop center in areas of hearing assessment, psychological assessment, speech hearing, language training, speech therapy, audiological support and everything for rehabilitation training of hearing impaired children from an early age. It also conducts several activities in this area of disability such as survey of children, parent counselling and training, social awareness programs, speech-hearing language training, pre-schooling, conducting competitive exams, competitions, workshops and seminars, primary schooling, parents’ get-together, educational tours, family picnics, festival celebrations, etc. Free ENT, dental, eye check-ups, physiotherapy sessions, cochlear implant care and hearing aid care and maintenance camps are organised for the beneficiaries of BalVikas Kendra and BalVikas Vishesh Shala.
The NGO has been appreciated and recognized for its efforts by the Government of Maharashtra.
