CRUSADE has been implementing the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) of Persons with Disability in Gummidipoondi block since 2021 with Salt of the Earth funding support. Presently there are more than 800 PwDs (Persons with Disability) in around 75 support groups formed by CRUSADE. SOTE supports for the Child Sponsorship programme by sponsoring 100 children who are disabled themselves or children of the parent(s) with disability. The sponsored children are in different grades – studying from grade 1 to grade 11 and are from more than 30 villages. As academic year has just began in June , we have distributed the set of note books, school uniform, school bags, dictionary and Geometric boxes to sponsored children. Some of the parents who are extremely poor were very grateful to the sponsor for having supplied the materials in time.

With a view to provide an opportunity to the sponsored children for supplementary education, we have identified around 20 volunteers in the villages and we had a meeting with 13 of them (all women) who have years of experience in coaching the students outside the school. Their services have been recognized by the state. The volunteers have agreed to provide the supplementary education to sponsored and other children in the village in one and half an hour session in the evening after school hours five days a week. MsUdaya, a yoga teacher from the area will coordinate the supplementary education activity in the field and CSP Manager will monitor the programme. It is planned to start this activity in July. In addition, CRUSADE has provided the following services to the disabled parents over a year under CBR Project.

Seven mothers of sponsored children were provided sewing machine at a subsidized cost to enhance their livelihood.Eleven parents were given physiotherapy at their doorstep which improved their functional status. Twelve parents were arranged loans for economic activity to improve their business. Two of them assisted for Housing. Fourteen parents/children received assistive devices such as caliper, prosthetic leg, wheel chair, hearing aid and stick.