Parvez Farid's Ummed school changes lives of special children

Story by ATV | Posted by Aasha Khosa | Date 24-03-2022

A special child walks with his mother to her school

Shahtaj Begum

Stephen Hawking proved that a differently-abled person is not a burden on the family and society. However, Hawking lived in a world where all his abilities were supported so that he could grow to his full mental potential. However, when Salman was growing up with a mental disability in Maharashtra’s Mumbara, his engineer uncle Parved Mohammad Ali Farid, was keen to support him and began a search for an appropriate school for him.

He found none suitable for Salman and started teaching him at home. Noticing the improvement in his nephew, Parvez M A Farid decided to help others in a similar situation. He launched Umeed - The Hope Special School for such children in Mumbara, a small town in Maharashtra. Today 300 children with special needs are enrolled in the school.

He realized that not only there are very few schools for special children but also a long waiting list for the admissions in the existing ones.

Parvez Farid says the needs of special children are very different from normal children and therefore there is a need to create suitable conditions for each child. In the end, his quest to educate Salman has ended with avenues opening for hundreds of other children.

A class of the special children in Ummed school, Mumbara

The teachers at Ummed School do understand the needs of these children and they create a support system for the child with the idea of making him as much self-reliant as possible. The school in Mumbara works in two shifts – the morning one is for mentally challenged students and the second one is for children with physical disabilities.

Parvez says there are a lot of misconceptions about special-need children. First of all, society has to be made aware of their needs so that the family and others accept them with an open heart.

Those suffering from mental disorders are unable to communicate about their needs. So, if the people around them are not trained to understand them, the situation can sometimes take a serious turn. Parvez says there is bias in society towards blind, mute-deaf, and mentally-disabled children. They are considered as a burden on society and the family and ignored.

Pervez Mohammad Ali Farid, founder, Ummed - the Hope school

Such children are also made fun of. However with the right training and proper counseling, these children can become responsible citizens of the country, he says.

The school encourages volunteers to spend time with the special children in the Udmeed School. Parvez says initially he would invite selected people to visit the school and he has noticed, such people, revisited the place often.

This initiative of Umeed School has helped in changing the sentiments and thoughts of the common people towards these children.

Abdul Majid Ansari told Awaz-the voice, “ Whenever I have time, I come to the school. I always carry some experience with me from my interaction. I once saw a baby girl trying to stand on her feet for the first time and when she took her first step, I had tears in my eyes.”

A girl child learning in Ummed school

He also recalls an incident when a girl was able to speak Apple for the first time after repeated attempts. “ I have no words to describe the happiness of success on her face. I came here to know how much these children want to learn. But we do not have the right arrangement to take care of them,” he said.

The pandemic-lockdown badly affected the education of special children. After schools reopened these children have to restart all over again since the gap has made them lose touch with what they had learned.

The teacher for the blind children says, “We cannot do anything online; we read and teach everything by touching it with our hands. We cannot understand what the child has written, nor can the child understand what the teacher has told. Be it reading in braille or working on a computer.”

A Class XII blind student says that he had a lot of difficulty because of not coming to school. He did not have a special computer, so his studies suffered a lot.

The mother of a special child told Awaz-the Voice that her son is hyperactive. “He used to be happy while going to school and in the lockdown, he become very irritable. It was very difficult to handle him.”

A child learns to walk around

Parvez Farid says that only a trained person can handle and understand these children. “We try to educate not only the children but also their parents that they should be easy to understand and handle their children. I hope with our efforts these children grow up to be the support of their family or at least can take up their responsibility.”

Not only education in special educational institutions but special children can be saved from unemployment by vocational training like art and craft, dress designing, computer, information technology, etc.