Scripting a World of Imagination!

“What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self” – Helen Keller

TMGi team members at NAB.

There was tremendous joy in the air during the recently concluded TMGi Q1 quarterly event, as every year the team devotes its first quarterly event for a social cause. On March 21, 2008 the team was all set for an exciting visit to the world of folks who are challenged and strong willed. The team along with RDC school children visited National Association for Blind with much curiosity to see how the NAB trainees/individuals are trained to become successful software engineers, call center experts, textile weavers in their own ways.

One of the trainees at NAB displays amazing dexterity in using his Braille notes.

Highly elated, Director of NAB, Mr. Srinivas briefed the team about NAB and its objectives. This was followed by a stunningly fluent and impressive speech by one of the trainees at NAB. He displayed amazing dexterity in using his Braille notes. In order to engage and connect with the NAB students a number of Intel-NAB team building games were organized. The activities included – Blindfolded games, Scavenger Hunt, etc. But the highlight of the day was the Dice-Cricket which set out a flutter of excitement from the trainees.

Highlights of the team building games
Unique Scavenger Hunt: A very interesting and unique Scavenger Hunt was organized, wherein the list of items to be collected were engraved in Braille script and the team comprising of employees and trainees had to find the complete list of items ranging from items like pink clip, leather belt to a dry leaf.

Dice cricket in progress.

Dice cricket: Dice-Cricket was organized by the NAB staff, wherein two teams stood facing each other with a table in between. This table served as the Pitch. The game progressed by players of the fielding side rolling the dice on to the ‘pitch’ and the batting side doing the same to score runs.

Pass-the-parcel game in progress..

Pass–the-parcel: Two teams made up of both trainees and employees were formed. The employees were blindfolded and were asked to pass the parcel. The trainees were all excited and anxious to grab the parcel and record their win! With all the high energy flowing around, few employee volunteers took up the initiative to engage the RDC school children in a variety of events like drawing, coloring, lemon and spoon, singing and dancing events.

The team visits the NAB workshop.

After a lip-smacking and yummy lunch the team visited the training centers to understand how NAB provides training to its participants to become independent individuals. We saw them work on lathe machines, filing, drilling, and engaged in carpentry work as well as programming in VC++/Oracle on the computers. It was a pleasure to see all the resources that NAB had, these resources ranged from Braille Scripts, Slits to help the trainees punch their letters, a full-fledged library with versatile collection of Braille-ed books, electronic Braille Printer and other Multimedia devices just to mention a few. Besides this, NAB also showed us their excellent placement records with their trainees joining leading companies which included IT firms too.

After this short excursion through NAB, we witnessed yet another feat that proved to us that these trainees were multi-skilled despite being differently challenged. Quite a few of the students volunteered during the tea break to entertain us with their melodious songs. Prizes were given away to the trainees who came forward to sing and we must admit we noticed a couple of budding artists.

With fond memories of the day, we bid adieu cherishing the wonderful moments that we spent at NAB with the vivid thumb impressions of all the employees on a flip-chart. It was a feeling of joy and content to watch these students have fun amidst all the challenges that they were faced with.

"Opportunity, rather than charity" is what these individuals need.

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Get in Touch with NAB :
NAB Rehabilitation Complex
CA Site No:4, NAB Road, Jeevan Bima Nagar,
Bangalore-560 075
India
Ph: +91-80-25281590 / +91-80-25281439
Mail: nabkarnataka@yahoo.co.in
Website: http://www.nabkarnataka.org/innerpage.html