Activities
The areas in which our Trust is mainly focused are
Education
- Preparing audio cassettes for their syllabi, reading books and writing exams for them
- Giving financial assistance towards payment of college fees at different levels of education, purchase of books etc.
- Helping in their projects for different courses
Medical Care
- Arranging medical camps periodically and providing medical assistance as and when required by students.
Personality Development
Besides helping in their education, Darshini takes special efforts to develop their overall personality.This is being done
- By arranging lectures by competent and eminent personalities and giving an opportunity to the students to interact with them.
- By conducting workshops and seminars of relevance to the students aimed at self development.
- By helping them to use meditation as a tool to improve their memory power and concentration.
- By arranging competitions with their sighted counterparts to boost their self-confidence and self-esteem.
- By providing opportunities to the students to sharpen their talent in sports, music and other fields of interest.
- By providing personal counseling
Some special programmes conducted for the students are
Spoken English classes
As most of our students have studied in vernacular medium during their schooling, communicating in english is difficult for them. To help them overcome this difficulty we conducted spoken english classes. A three week in-house programme was arranged during the 2007 summer holidays in which they were taught to communicate in english. The students also benefited from interacting with people from different walks of life like personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force, writers, dramatists, social workers, musicians etc. This programme helped in boosting their self esteem.
Computer training programme
Taking into consideration the fact that computer knowledge is essential for competing in the present scenario, Darshini, along with Microsoft Lab, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras conducted a certified short-term training programme on Basic Computers during the summer vacation of 2008 and 2009.
In the year 2008, ten students were trained by a visually challenged research scholar Mr. Sriram for two months. Thus, they were exposed to nuances of computer technology and giving them sight through touch as it were.
In the year 2009,20 students got an opportunity to stay in the hostel of IIT Madras and undergo the computer training programme under the guidance of our own senior students Mr. Nagarajan (M.Phil) and Dr. Muthuraman. To make the best use of time available, the students were taught spoken hindi, spoken english, english grammar and hardware knowledge by our senior students, Mr. Varadarajan (PhD) and Mr. Tajudheen (M.Phil English Lecturer).
The students also got the opportunity to learn spoken hindi and interact with eminent speakers who had come from different walks of life. This will continue to be an annual programme during the summer vacation as Darshini is interested in making all its students computer literate. Some of the deserving students have been given scanners and laptop computers to help them become self reliant.
Field Trips
To enable the students to get a feel of the environment, day trips are arranged once a year to places in and around Chennai.