Stop Othering of the Other, volunteer at National NGO

Broadly speaking, our society is split into two categories, the mainstream and the other. The other gets defined and refined across various boundaries which can be social, racial, economic, physical and also psychological. Othering is a social disorder which hollows the social order from within. I recently came across a news article which read “Visually-impaired protest lack of jobs”. With a sigh, all I could think of was – till when?

I got a sense of relief when, while surfing my facebook newsfeed, I came across an NGO named National Organization for Social Empowerment. I was relieved to know that there are others like me who bother themselves for others (pun intended). So what does this NGO has done to offer some respite to the socially unaccepted? Here’s a glimpse.

The NGO has initiated a National Training Centre under their project EMPOWER aimed at the upliftment of socially deprived. The training centre has been opened at GTB Nagar in New Delhi in association with The Quest with Mukti. It provides basic computer training, preparation for competitive exams, soft skills training, personality building, career counseling, placement and grievances cell, scribe provision, e-text conversion center and job placement.

There have been innumerable incidents which epitomized governmental apathy towards the physically challenged. The orders have been passed by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) but as it has always been with our honorable government, passing orders and implementing them are separated by an impassable chasm.

Besides the disparity between stating and implementing, there have also been examples of laws which are close to impossible in their implementation. The UPSC has mandated a written permission stating the scribe’s details to be submitted a month prior to the examination. If they be bestowed with glasses of realism, they may come closer to realizing that the scribes are usually decided a day or two before the test. Protesters also protested against these improbable and unrealistic laws which add up to the façade of laws and orders, only increasing the troubles for the already-troubled others of the society.

NGOs like National Organization for Social Empowerment are doing the bit and their efforts are worth appreciation. With the beginning of May, the NGO has begun its enrollments for the training centre.

National Organization for Social Empowerment is a group of social uplifters who aim to better the society by providing remedies and opportunities in Health Care, Education, Social Rehabilitation & Rural Upliftment, Food Security, Empowerment, and Mainstreaming of specially and differently abled people. With the collective vision of ‘inclusiveness’, the group has been advancing the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs) through micro level social intervention.