Blog Details
Purnima Barman, aged 18, is blind by birth. Her father Mohan Barman passed away when Purnima was very young. Purnima’s mother Rekha works as a day labour and is the only earning member of the family. Poverty could not dampen Purnima’s spirit. Despite extreme poverty, Purnima’s mother wanted her daughter to complete her school and join college for further education. Purnima completed her schooling from her village situated in a remote corner of Darjeeling district. Her performance in board examination was above average. Since there is no college in her village, Purnima had to come to Siliguri. Her good marks secured admission in a local College at Siliguri but finding any suitable disable friendly accommodation was impossible. Further, economic condition of the family prevented Purnima from affording a PG accommodation.
Our volunteers working at Siliguri identified Purnima and brought her to our residential hostel situated at Matigara in Siliguri. Name of the unit is Matrichhaya. Matrichhaya is a free residential home for Visually Challenged students, where several other visually challenged students like Purnima stay and pursue higher education in colleges or University. The unit is situated on a sprawling campus spread across 2.5 acres of land. Since accommodation requirements for the Visually Challenged are quite different that the ones for sighted persons, the campus as well as the building is built keeping in mind special requirements of persons with disability, especially the Visually Challenged.
Visually impaired students from districts of North Bengal and even the neighbouring state of Sikkim who come to Siligury and enrol their names in college or University are provided free accommodation at our hostel for the Visually Challenged. Besides lodging, food is also free for blind students. Apart from food and lodging, blind students also require other support for education. Service of readers is one such requirement. At Matrichhaya, blind students also get reader support absolutely free. To foster overall development of students, Matrichhaya also provides free basic computer education for residents of the hostel. Music is another stream in which students are provided free training. To facilitate transportation of Visually Challenged students, Matrichhaya provides free transportation of students to their colleges or university and back. At present, 34 Visually Challenged students from several districts reside at Matrichhaya. These students come from families with marginal economic resources. Somehow, their families manage to pay for college or university fees. Paying for hostel and other essentials are and additional burden for them. It is for free facilities available at Matrichhaya, these blind students like Purnima along with Rekha, Shabana, Ajit and many other students from economically marginal rural families are able to pursue higher education.
Running a unit like Matrichhaya requires huge amount of funds every month. Besides other operational costs, cost of food alone is Rs. 2,500/- per student per month. Other expenditures like Braille paper & study materials, reader services, computer training, music training, transportation and some incidental expenses add up to Rs. 5,000/- per student per month.
For a philanthropic Organisation like Turnstone Global, it is impossible to provide the much needed services to Visually Challenged students, enabling them to move ahead in their efforts to educate themselves a become self-reliant. Efforts like this can continue only with support from benevolent individuals. We appeal to every benevolent citizen to generously contribute and help our unfortunate sightless brothers and sisters in their effort to establish themselves as self-reliant individuals. Your whole hearted support can help them realise their dreams.
