Only a life lived for others, is a life worthwhile,” Albert Einstein’s famous preaching could be seen practiced by a tribal lady in the Capital City of Jharkhand, who, despite facing all odds in her life, has pledged to work for differently abled kids.
Sheela linda (Age), the founder of Prakash Kunj, an NGO which works for skill development of poor and differently abled children, is working for the Divyang kids for over 20 years from now.
With the dream of merging their lives with the mainstream, linda laid the foundation of Prakash Kunj in 1998.
Her strenuous journey started in Hatia’s Harijan Basti with a meager strength of five students. Since then, she has been putting her efforts in providing basic education and training to these children in order to develop their skills. With the mission of making these children self-reliant, she teaches them to manufacture light accessories such as paper bags, wax candles, envelops, earthen lamps etc.
linda said, “I along with three of my teachers train these students to manufacture and sell so that they can live an independent life. This boosts their confidence and self-esteem. Poverty strsicken children who cannot speak, hear or understand generally get neglected by the society which brings down their morale. Working with them for the last 19 years, I got to master my skills of communicating using sign languages. I guess hard work pays off as I was selected to be one of the coaches of Special Olympics.”
Sheela drew inspiration from one of her friend who was deaf and mute. She used to communicate with Sheela in sign languages that Sheela could easily decipher but the general mass couldn’t. This motivated Sheela to lay the foundation for Prakash Kunj.
“I always believed that every person on this earth is different from one another but have their own qualities and talents. Similarly, my kids are very special and have a variety of talents in them. All that was required was to recognize their talents and keep motivating them in the right direction. One student who joined us started teaching here after completing his training. Recently he was offered a job by a renowned hotel in Ranchi. It was such a proud moment for me”, added Sheela.
On weekends she invites the students of NIFT, who run the Kartavya programme, to come to her institute in the evenings and provide tuitions to these children. Rahul Ranjan, President of Kartavya and a 3rd year B.Tech student said, “Kartavya remains committed towards helping the needy children attain education. Our collaboration with Sheela didi is special indeed and we feel lucky to be a part of such a noble cause.”