Lekhadeep Vocational Training – Rehabilitation Centre

Lekhadeep is a Professional Education-Training-cum-Rehabilitation Centre for Mentally Retarded Children. It is an integrated and Holistic Project of the three tier system, dove-tailing the three following essential and interdependent components.

I. Special School
Catch them young and teach basic

Social Skills like dressing, toilet, hygiene, Communication etc. and
Living Skills concepts like colour, size, shape, time, money etc [essential for effective imbibing of Vocational Training]
and give Pre Vocational Training - grooming for VTC [Comprehensive School to Workshop Training]
II. Vocational Training Centre
Prepare to put to use VTC Training and earn
If ripe enough, bag open market job and retain it
And give Pre Vocational Training - grooming for VTC [Comprehensive School to Workshop Training]
III. Sheltered Workshop
1st stage in empowerment and rehabilitation

Prepare to put to use VTC Training and earn
If ripe enough, bag open market job and retain it
If more advanced and motivated, start a self employment project on a viable and sustainable basis [with parental assistance and with/ without financial assistance from CAPART (Rural)/ National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation etc.]
Note: Those not ripe enough or motivated enough and/ or do not have suitable family support will continue to stay in the Sheltered Workshop and earn according to their capacity.

Morale Boosting for our mission of thus bringing them in the mainstream of society, is being given by the Principal Accountant General by providing accommodation for Special School and Work Sheds, while the National Institute for Mentally Handicapped provided necessary guidance for setting up the Centre and running it successfully.

Its doors are open to all eligible persons [without restriction of caste, creed, community, religion, race or sex]. The Income Tax Department has given exemption for all donations under Section 80G of the IT Act. Begun with just 6 Trainees in 1994, the Centre has now about 90 MR Students and Trainees including Autistic, Cerebral Palsy, MR and Multiple Disabilities[besides more than 40 persons empowered/ rehabilitated in various streams].

The main objective is to mould and shape them as well rounded, self reliant and productive citizens through a wide range of Self Employment/ Sheltered Employment/ job opportunities. This is through offering them, functional education followed by special training to learn and improve skills to manufacture marketable goods and remunerate them. The very training will ensure that they gain self-confidence, sustenance and enable them to lead a secure life as useful, productive and respectable citizens of the society, to the extent their handicap permits.

As a part of the need based approach, a Group Residential home is also run under the auspices of THE NATIONAL TRUST for the welfare of persons with Autism, CP, MR and Multiple Disabilities.

The HEALTH CARE programme runs through all the above activities like a thread running through a garland, as a vital link in their effective functioning, as MR persons suffer with one or more other disabilities as well which require constant attendance & treatment.