Chennai: Lit the Light, a local NGO, strives towards the upliftment of visually impaired students across Tamilnadu.
The NGO founded by Barath S N, helps the visually impaired from arranging readers and scribes to identifying their hidden talents.
Currently, the co-ordinators operate a free browsing centre with Braille methods at their Porur office to help specially abled in applying for education and jobs.
In an interview with News Today, the founder who hails from Arasampatti village says, “After my encounter with a visually challenged fritters seller, I felt the need to help them.” The humanitarian later conducted reading session at the Poonamallee School for differently abled, where a student secured 960 marks in his class 12 board examination. He claims that this mooted him to start an NGO along with his friends Ramkumar and Ravikanth in the year 2014. The voluntary driven service has arranged more than 7,000 scribes each year across the state.
“We have volunteers everywhere, even overseas too. Chandra from United States of America helps with recording audio books and Bhagirathi co-ordinates from Bahrain but we don’t have enough volunteers in the state to write in Tamil’ says the samaritan.
Talking about the struggles of getting volunteers, Barath says, “Most of the volunteers are either working or studying and they are available only in the weekends. We lag in volunteers when the examination for blind comes on weekdays. Only if the college management provides on-duty leave for the registered volunteers, we can build a better world for the differently abled.” He also urges the house wives to do their bid to the empowerment of these students.
Apart from this, the NGO also conducts sports and cultural meets to develop the extra curricular skills of the visually impaired. Talking about Jothi, a visually challenged playback singer, Barath gleams with pride, “We identified Jothi’s talent in 2015 and made her to sing in every stage we could get for her. Two years later, a video of her singing went viral and music composer G V Prakash offered her a chance to sing in the movie, Adangathey.”
Barath S N can be reached at 9894949878.
| Sportspersons who rose to fame with the organisation’s aid | ||
| NameĀ | SportsĀ | Achievement |
| Ramesh | Cricket | World Best Fielder Award |
| Vijay Shanthi | Judo | Gold medal in Commonwealth Championship |
| Suseela | Judo | Gold medal in Commonwealth Championship |
| Manoharan | Judo | Bronze in Commonwealth Championship |
Article by Sureka Rajasekar