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We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others.
- Helen Keller
16th NCPEDP - Lemon Tree Hotels Helen Keller Awards 2015
Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within.
- Helen Keller
INTRODUCTION
Javed Abidi Honorary Director NCPEDP 2nd December, 2015
Two years back, we decided to discontinue the Helen Keller Awards. They were started at a time when the discourse on employment for people with disabilities was unable to move beyond basket weaving and candle making. After 15 years, the Awards had inspired many leaders and even similar other awards. We thought our job was done. What we did not expect was the reaction that we received from people with disabilities, corporates, and organisations working in this area. Personal narratives about how getting the Award changed their self-awareness; how there was competition among managers within a corporate for the Helen Keller Award; etc. left us astounded. When we decided to relaunch the Award, we could not have hoped to find a better partner than Lemon Tree Hotels. Besides being a Helen Keller Awardee, Lemon Tree Hotels has been exemplary in their support towards creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities. If we needed any further nudge to re-launch Helen Keller Awards, this partnership was all that was required!
The NCPEDP-Lemon Tree Helen Keller Awards could not have come back at a better time. This year we are celebrating the 20th year of India’s first and so far, the only disability rights legislation – The Disability Act of 1995. Once again, NCPEDP has pioneered a nation-wide movement to highlight the disability rights discourse through its Equality+20 Campaign. This milestone is also a perfect time to look back at our successes and failures. And it is time to take the disability rights discourse away from cities to the small towns and villages of India. While we celebrate the heroes of the disability movement, we are in a way fatigued of hearing the same stories. We now want to hear how the Disability Act of 1995 impacted the ‘aam aadmi’ in the remotest corner of the country.
To paraphrase Margaret Atwood, we want to hear from the people “who are not in the papers…who live in the blank white pages at the edges of print”. The NCPEDP- Lemon Tree Helen Keller Awards is one such attempt to tell the stories of some of those people.
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MESSAGE
Patu Keswani Chairman & Managing Director The Lemon Tree Hotel Company
The NCPEDP-Lemon Tree Hotels Helen Keller Awards 2015 recognize people with disabilities who have become successful role models and contributing members of society. These awards also recognize other individuals/organizations who have built successful business models with their inclusivity/diversity initiatives through hiring disabled persons.
Lemon Tree Hotels believes that the company should stand for more than ‘just profit’. In order for us to make this a part of our DNA, we have focused our efforts on creating a socially inclusive work environment which seeks to attract people of different backgrounds, abilities and ethnicities and offer them fulfilling work as part of a unified yet diverse team.
We impart relevant employability skilling to employees with disabilities in roles where their disability does not come in the way of successful job performance. We try for optimal placement – giving disabled employees tasks where the disability is not a disadvantage. They can then be employed routinely and on an equal footing with other people (not as a charitable initiative). Mainstreaming disabled employees is the only sustainable policy in the long run, as it becomes cost neutral and over time cost beneficial.
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The Government has announced the much needed Accessible India initiative. And we are all awaiting passage of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014. We need to collaborate, to find innovative solutions to harness these policy developments with social, societal, attitudinal and environmental change to bring tangible and exponential impact to the lives of India’s disabled population. Inco rporation of ‘Accessibility’ initiatives in the list of approved activities under Schedule VII of the Companies Act 2013 will be a step forward.
MESSAGE
Som Mittal Chairman NCPEDP
India has over 70 million people with disabilities - a population integral to the country’s much discussed demographic dividend. Yet the actualization of this human capital remains dependent on the twin parameters of education and employment -both a function of accessibility.
2015 therefore has special significance.
It is therefore almost propitious, that this year, NCPEDP revived the prestigious Helen Keller Awards with support from The Lemon Tree Hotel Company - a role model employer of people with disabilities. We received unparalleled entries, making it very difficult for the jury to select 10 Awardees.
My heartiest congratulations to all the winners, applicants and to each organization and individual that is doing such remarkable work to promote employment for people with disabilities in India and we hope their work will be emulated by others.
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AWARDS
The Sixteenth NCPEDP-Lemon Tree Hotels Helen Keller Awards The story of the Helen Keller Awards dates back to 1999, making this the sixteenth year of the Awards. Over the many years, these Awards have come to be recognised as the most prestigious Indian benchmark for honouring people and organisations that have worked towards a barrier-free, non-discriminatory and inclusive India. Though over the years many individuals and organisations have been honoured, two factors have remained constant. One, the highly encouraging increase in the number of nominations that we receive each year; and two, the truly diverse nature of work being done by the Awardees (and indeed, all the nominees) in their respective fields. Both these facts amply suggest that India is well on her way of recognising disability as an issue that needs to be addressed. However, like always, we would sound a word of caution. The fight f or equal rights, access and opportunity for people with disabilities is an ongoing one. There is still much that needs to be done.
Nevertheless, please join us in felicitating the 10 Awardees of 2015, as we share their inspiring and motivating journeys. Heartiest congratulations to them for overcoming myriad difficulties in making our country – its institutions and workplaces more accommodating and inclusive!
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SELECTION COMMITTEE
Selection Committee
Patanjali Keswani Patu is Chairman and Managing Director of Lemon Tree Hotels, which owns/operates 27 hotels, 3,000 rooms across 16 cities and employs 3,500 people. Lemon Tree Hotels pioneered the mid-market space with the upscale Lemon Tree Premier, midscale Lemon Tree Hotels and economy/ budget Red Fox Hotels. Patu is also Chairman of Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities (SCPwD) and Chair of CII National Committee on Special Abilities 2015-16.
Aarti Dhar Aarti Dhar, in her career of more than 25 years as a journalist, has covered a range of pertinent issues including disability. Her strengths are social sector and political reporting. Among the many recognitions for her work is the first Chandulal Chandrakar Fellowship for Journalism instituted by the State Government of Chhattisgarh, in 2001. Aarti a former Deputy Editor of The Hindu, a leading national daily, is currently a freelancer.
Meenu Venkateswaran Meenu has over 25 years of experience with leading organizations in the corporate and social sectors. She is co-founder of two NGOs - Pravah and ComMutiny the Youth Collective (CYC). Pravah works with young people to develop personal leadership and social responsibility. CYC is a collective of youth organisations advocating the rights of young people for participation, development and leadership. She is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore.
Salil Chaturvedi Salil Chaturvedi has written on disability issues challenging society’s stereotypical gaze at disability. He has represented India for Wheelchair Tennis overseas. In 2009, he undertook the ‘Brighter Horizon Sail’, sailing from Mumbai to Goa to promote access for disabled persons. He has acted in ‘Galli Galli Sim Sim’, a television series for children. In 2012, he was recognised as a CNN IBN Super Idol.
Vandana Bedi Vandana Bedi, Vice-Chair of AADI, New Delhi and Trustee of Basic Needs India, Bangalore, works as a trainer cum consultant in the field of disability and development. Her professional training and clinical experience of more than 30 years has been in Paediatric Occupational Therapy and CBR. She has also been actively involved in advocacy issues for the rights of people with disabilities.
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CATEGORY A Role Model Disabled Person Disabled persons from within the disability sector or outside, who have been active as ambassadors of the cause of employment for disabled people and are positive role models for others.
Awardees • Diethono Nakhro • Kanika Agarwal • Nitin Goyal
We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
- Helen Keller
CATEGORY ‘A’ AWARDEES
Diethono Nakhro Disability Awareness Advocate Kohima [email protected]
Diethono Nakhro sustained a spinal injury in a car accident in 2006 which left her with mobility impairment in both her upper and lower limbs. She is a passionate campaigner and leading voice for disability rights in the state of Nagaland where awareness is still at a very poor level.
Understanding that positive change is going to be possible only when there is better awareness in the society, Diethono has used both the local print media as well as social media extensively to spread the message and start conversations on disability which has remained practically a taboo subject that is barely discussed thus far in Naga society.
Diethono has started awareness programmes in colleges to help young students better understand what it means and how it feels to be a person with a disability. She talks to students about disability issues, particularly the poor state of affairs in the state, and uses her own lived personal story to motivate them to step up and become change agents in the society. Firmly believing that educating the youth on disability is a most important step, she continues with her efforts to rope in more educational institutions so that the programme can spread across the state.
She also actively uses the Right to Information Act to bring attention to the complete lack of accessibility in government offices and other public places and to press the government for action.
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CATEGORY ‘A’ AWARDEES
Kanika Agarwal Executive, v-shesh Learning Services Pvt. Ltd. Mumbai [email protected]
Kanika is a post lingual deaf person who completed her post-graduation in Analytical Chemistry with merit from Mumbai University. Despite absence of an inclusive teaching and learning environment, Kanika learnt a difficult subject through extensive reading and self-study. She was the only person with disability, from her college to secure T.N. Venkatesan Chemistry Scholarship for excellence in performance.
Having faced myriad challenges and alienation during her mainstream education, she fully understood the obstacles faced by disabled persons in pursuing higher education. Her association at v-shesh helped her gain deeper insight into the challenges in skilling and finding employment. This motivated her to use her knowledge in assisting other persons with disability.
As a part of the core team at v-shesh, Kanika has been involved in different aspects of training and placements – mobilization, short tenure and customized industry specific trainings, job connects and workplace accommodations to create an enabling environment for disabled persons through sensitization workshops.
Under Kanika’s guidance, the v-shesh team has evolved a specialized curriculum for teaching English to the deaf, using a mix of visual learning techniques, sign language, constructive thinking and expression. She regularly counsels disabled students on the challenges faced and motivates them to pursue higher education.
Kanika is an active participant volunteering with different deaf associations. She was recently invited as a Panelist at the National Summit conducted by Ability Foundation. With her deep interest in academics and passion for assisting disabled persons, she looks forward to making a mark in the diversity and inclusion efforts across the country.
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CATEGORY ‘A’ AWARDEES
Nitin Goyal Head of Projects & Asset Controlling Nokia Solutions & Networks Gurgaon [email protected]
Nitin heads the asset controlling role for Nokia India, monitoring working capital levels to reduce funds tied up in current assets. He also leads various change and efficiency projects for reducing costs and improving controls.
Before this, he has spent ten years managing the company’s Treasury. In his last role, he was heading the Regional Treasury for Asia Pacific and India. For his stellar contribution to the field of Treasury, the corporate publication - CFO India - conferred on him the Treasury20 Award honouring top twenty Treasurers of India.
He has also served on India Region Leadership Team as Head of Business Excellence function.
A paraplegic and a wheelchair user for past twenty years, Nitin has been actively working with NGOs supporting people living with spinal injuries. He launched SCI-India in 2002, the first national online peer group for people with spinal injuries. As a volunteer peer counselor at Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, he supports people with new injuries in coping with their multiple health problems and in re-building their lives. He is serving on Governing Board of The Spinal Foundation and is a member of The Spinal Cord Society.
He has spoken at several conferences and published many articles on disability sector, with a focus on economic rehabilitation.
For Nitin, a full life means balancing time between profession, family, social work, friends and travel.
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Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
- Helen Keller
CATEGORY B Role Model Supporter of Increased Employment Opportunities for Disabled People Individuals from within the disability sector or outside, who have contributed substantially to the cause of promoting employment opportunities for disabled people over an extended period of time.
Awardees • Anita Narayan • Aparna Dass • Ganesh Shivaram Hegde
ROLE MODEL SUPPORTERS
Anita Narayan Founder & Managing Trustee, EKansh Trust Pune [email protected]
A double graduate in Law and Psychology/Sociology, Anita’s prime focus is an inclusive society where people with disabilities are empowered.
After many years of volunteering with NGOs around the country and working with people with different disabilities, she founded EKansh and works personally on every project from conception to conclusion. She ensures that EKansh has a holistic rather than a one-dimensional approach. Her many travels abroad and in India have given her a wider perspective of the term ‘inclusive’.
Three Job Fairs in Pune for candidates with all qualifications and skills followed EKansh Trust’s first successful attempt to place people with disabilities in Anita’s family run manufacturing company. The process of training and placement is ongoing at EKansh. Anita also conducts access audits for corporate workplaces.
When EKansh speaks of persons with disabilities, they mean individuals who grow up in different circumstances in a country where challenges exist on all levels. Companies seek employees with good values, qualifications and various skills. So, education and training are very important as also familial/social awareness, support and sensitivity.
EKansh takes a holistic approach to disability to ensure inclusion in the real sense of the word thereby influencing society to become more empathic to possibilities beyond disabilities. Management, design and architecture students are sensitized to ensure that they become more inclusive in their attitudes and work.
Anita has won the In-orbit Woman Achiever Award and the World Women Leadership Congress Award for outstanding achievement.
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ROLE MODEL SUPPORTERS
Aparna Dass Program Manager, Livelihoods American India Foundation Gurgaon [email protected]
Aparna Dass works as Program Manager with American India Foundation, where she heads the Ability Based Livelihood Empowerment - ABLE Program. Over 8500 persons with disabilities across the country have been skilled and over 4000 of them have been supported for employment through ABLE.
AIF in collaboration with Coca-Cola India, Being Human, CNN-IBN, The Hans Foundation and Swablamban is managing the VEER Campaign. VEER is the first of its kind initiative which has brought together the private sector, NGOs, Government and Media on one platform to work towards the common cause of promoting employment of persons with disability.
She works actively on capacity building of organisations and with many mainstream skill training organisations for inclusion of persons with disabilities in their program. Through training of trainers, over 50 mainstream training centres successfully integrated disabled people in their programs. Research and curricula development for facilitating the training of disabled people are an important part of her work.
Prior to joining AIF, Aparna worked with the Cheshire Home Bangalore, where she was instrumental in establishing the Livelihood Resource Centre for people with disabilities, which caters to the livelihood needs of people with all types of disabilities.
She has also worked with Action Aid India and Balloons in the past, where she was actively engaged in advocacy for the right of employment for disabled people. With her efforts, many companies started hiring people with disabilities and adopted inclusive practices.
She credits her family for motivating her constantly to work further on creating a more inclusive society.
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ROLE MODEL SUPPORTERS
Ganesh Shivaram Hegde Deputy Director – Livelihood The Association of People with Disability (APD) Bengaluru [email protected]
Ganesh Shivaram Hegde began his journey at the Association of People with Disability (APD) Bengaluru in 1992. He did his B.Sc (Agriculture) and later post graduation in Environmental Science. Ganesh leads the Horticulture Training Unit of APD which is unique and only one of its kind in India. The Unit has been in existence since 1987 and the programme has seen over 1800 persons with disability find gainful employment in the areas of gardening, horticulture, cookery, sustainable agriculture, and allied fields. The beneficiaries are largely people with locomotor disabilities, deaf persons and people with learning disability, in the age group of 18 to 30 years, who drop out from school and are from the poorest of poor families from different regions of Karnataka.
The Horticulture programme promotes ecology/green environment and is also therapeutic. Ganesh is undoubtedly one of the very few individuals who has expertise in both the areas of horticulture and disability. During his tenure with APD, he has trained many gardeners, gardener specialists, supervisors and entrepreneurs. He has also supported several other NGOs to initiate horticulture therapy projects to reach out to more people with disabilities. Ganesh presently runs all livelihood programmes of APD for gainful employment like horticulture, industrial training centre, employment lead training, job readiness programme, and all departments connected with them for mobilizing youth with disabilities.
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Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
- Helen Keller
CATEGORY C Role Model Company/NGO/Institution for its commitment towards promoting equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities Organisations from the disability sector or outside, that have shown commitment towards promoting equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
Awardees • AMBA • ANZ Bengaluru Hub • Sounds of Silence Foundation • State Bank of India
The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.
- Helen Keller 15
CATEGORY ‘C’ AWARDEES
AMBA
AMBA is a Training & Business House with a difference. Its employees are adults with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. An Ashoka Fellow driven Social Enterprise, AMBA economically empowers these adults using Information Technology, Peer Training & Peer Supervision. Our ecosystem of learning and earning is appropriate to their acumen, making them contributors to family and society. Ravi Kiran identified by NIMHANS with 11 IQ has no verbal capacity and was unable to put pen to paper. Today, he is a data operator doing twelve Customer Application forms; he was a trainer to Varun with autistic tendencies and higher ability; he is first point of training for special educators who come from AMBA certified partner centres (ACPCs) pan India. He is part of the hardware team and AMAZINGLY travels 30 kms changing two local buses using AMBA visual matching methodology.
Their lack of social skills limits them from working in mainstream companies, so AMBA collaborates with Institutions pan India and helps them evolve into hubs for learning and earning, using their infrastructure, administration and trainers, keeping overheads to absolute minimum. We have shared our concept with 131 ACPCs in 17 states in India.
AMBA’s business model changes to meet different environments. Testing work within 12 centres has brought innumerable endorsements showcasing this community takes business very seriously and meets SLAs of clients. Our cloud is very well architected and encrypted. Our servers meet specific needs to include VPN and antivirus requirements. The physical data gets encrypted immediately on uploading to ensure maximum security. Biometrics within the core centre, further secures the environment.
AMBA’s mission is to impact 120,000 people with intellectual disabilities by 2025 within independent and sustainable units of Business Processing at ACPCs worldwide.
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COMPANIES/NGOs/INSTITUTIONS
The impact however has been way beyond economic empowerment, eradicating stigma and uplifting a community that has been sidelined till date.
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CATEGORY ‘C’ AWARDEES
ANZ Bengaluru Hub
ANZ’s history of expansion and growth stretches over 180 years. We have a strong franchise in Retail, Commercial and Institutional banking in our home markets of Australia and New Zealand and we have been operating in Asia Pacific for more than 30 years. Today, ANZ operates in 34 countries globally. We are the fourth largest bank in Australia, the largest banking group in New Zealand and the Pacific, and among the top 20 banks in the world. In India, ANZ established its Mumbai branch in 2011 and Gurgaon branch in 2015.
ANZ is supported by its regional hubs in Melbourne, Wellington, Bengaluru, Chengdu, Manila and Suva. ANZ Bengaluru Hub began in 1989 with 40 employees and today has more than 7,000 people working in technology, operations and shared services. We support ANZ 24 hours a day, six days per week servicing all regions of the Bank – Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific, Europe & America.
ANZ Bengaluru Hub follows ANZ’s global Corporate Sustainability framework which aims to help people progress by focusing on Diversity & Inclusion, Financial Inclusion & Capability, and Sustainable Development.
Our focus on inclusion of persons with disability began with a small pilot of 12 people recruited in 2010. Over the past few years, we have expanded the scope and scale of our engagement to include hiring a total of 106 people with disability – 59 of them in the fiscal year ending 30 September 2015.
The drive to hire people with disabilities and include them in the ANZ family is now part of our work ethos, underpinned by our belief that a diverse workplace creates a business advantage. We have been successful thanks to our dedicated volunteers, our partnerships with not-for-profit organisations, and because ANZ senior leaders take a personal interest.
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COMPANIES/NGOs/INSTITUTIONS
We have made significant progress in the past few years to build an inclusive culture based on values, responsible behaviour and a code of ethics and conduct. We are determined to keep up the momentum into the future.
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CATEGORY ‘C’ AWARDEES
Sounds of Silence Foundation
Sounds of Silence is an initiative to empower hearing impaired people across cities, borders, nations with the beauty of expression and art of communication. Introducing them to technology and providing them opportunities to lead a self- sustainable life by enhancing their employability and overall personality development, our mission is to overcome communication barriers for hearing impaired persons and lead to “deafness with equality”.
We believe that education is the most important weapon in the armory of a young Indian and forms the basis of communication. We feel that we have received a lot from society and now it’s time to give back. This is what we believe in, at SOS: Do more than just exist.
Around 6% of Indians have a hearing loss, of which 66% are unemployed. We wish to use Technology (Mobile Phones) as a medium to communicate with, empower and train the Hearing and Speech Impaired community and eventually set up India’s first Hearing Impaired BPO.
We provide Hearing and Speech Impaired persons with 2 months of basic communication training coupled with professional skills development on MS Office. We groom them to work on functional domains:
1. Basic Computer Skills 2. SEO – Search Engine Optimization for marketing of client website. 3. Social Media Marketing on different platform for the client. 4. Corporate Training polishing on the communication skills of the Hearing Impaired
people.
Over the next five years we want to change the outlook towards the deaf and build an efficient workforce that helps in building CRM chat based BPO for every business. This would enhance the brand value of all our partners that are drifting towards the
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COMPANIES/NGOs/INSTITUTIONS
customer centric culture. In India - a land of 1.3 billion people, retail sector is ready to bloom and SOS has already taken little steps to get strong CRM best practices run by hearing impaired community for a country where organised retail is just 3 % of the total.
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CATEGORY ‘C’ AWARDEES
State Bank of India
A civilised society can be recognised by its many attributes – one of them being its sensitivity towards its citizens with disabilities. State Bank of India has always been in the forefront of India’s civilised society in all of its endeavours, policies and actions. Its efforts towards making the organizational workplace more conducive for our employees with disabilities take many forms, be it for our customers, or for our workforce.
Founded over two centuries ago, State Bank of India is the largest banking and financial institution in India with significant international presence. It is the only bank from the Indian subcontinent in the elite group of Fortune 500 companies.
Visually Impaired persons are operating accounts with us. They have been issued ATM cards and operations can be performed at any Networked ATM across the country. State Bank has also installed “talking ATM machines with Braille key pads”. We have 8600+ such ATMs especially for visually impaired customers. Mostly ATMs have access through ramps designed for people with locomotor disability. Locker facilities and Internet Banking facilities are also available. Many branches have ramps and wheel chairs. The Bank provides special services to customers with multiple disabilities like Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation, etc. A huge exercise for sensitizing and training frontline operating staff is being undertaken.
State Bank of India has people with disabilities on its roll in all ranks. The Bank provides special training for them. A variety of machines, computers and software have been provided to them for their smooth functioning. The Bank partners with NGOs working in this area to improve its knowledge base. It is a journey in which the initial steps have been taken, very positive steps, but a huge distance remains to be covered. A massive effort towards that goal is underway.
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COMPANIES/NGOs/INSTITUTIONS
Mr. Chellam M., GrahakMitra in SBI Sivakasi Main Branch. After undergoing extensive training programme at State Bank Learning Centre, his proficiency has gone up and he now prints more than 300 passbooks a day and answers all customer queries. He also serves customers by linking their UID (Aadhar) number to their Bank accounts and. updating their phone number in their customer profile.
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LOGO
The Disabled-Friendly Corporate Logo
The Disabled-Friendly Corporate Logo was designed in 1999, when the Helen Keller Awards were first instituted. The brief for the design was simple – it was to portray the partnership between the Indian corporate sector and the disabled citizens of India. What emerged was a simple, yet striking, graphic representation in blue and yellow – the international colours of disability. The logo symbolises an ideal relationship between companies and people with disabilities. Visually, it portrays two sides of the same coin, or in other words a yin and yang relationship. It seeks to reinforce the fact that people with disabilities bring to the table qualities such as commitment, productivity, talent and loyalty. It also tries to spread awareness amongst corporates that they should practice non-discrimination at the workplace, and ensure that it is barrier-free.
The fact that many companies and organisations have realised the economic benefits of employing people with disabilities, is evident from the increasing number of nominations that we receive each year. And while many of these corporates are implementing policies that are already in place globally, it is highly encouraging that others have developed and instituted their own disabled-friendly corporate policies.
As a supporter of the disability sector, we urge you to do your bit by influencing policy at your own workplace, opposing instances of discrimination, and persuading others to offer equal opportunity to people with disabilities.
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Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
- Helen Keller
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E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ncpedp.org
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR PROMOTION OF EMPLOYMENT FOR DISABLED PEOPLE
