Tabitha Enabling Academy – Kohima

In the hilly terrains of Nagaland, Tabitha Enabling Academy started with a simple mission: to provide opportunities for children with disabilities in a society clouded by stigma and silence.
From tailored learning and sign language classes, to vocational training and remote outreach – this is a story of grit and grace.
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Uhh Tabitha Enabling Academy, it was started in the year 2012.

The name Tabitha comes from a Greek word meaning kind.

Umm and in the Bible, we see that Tabitha is a girl.

Uh she work her whole life uhh serving the poor, so we named our institution um taking her as a role model.

At first, we started the school… uhh with uhh having in mind of having an inclusive, so our school was like uhh Tabitha Enabling Inclusive Academy.

But then, after some few year, we have to shift out.

Also, we we shifted it into, again, the- a special school because there was no awareness in Nagaland.

And many parents doesn’t want their children to mingle with children with disabilities, thinking that umm it’s a curse.

There were lot of uh stigma.

As a parents like, we thought li.. I mean since there was no awareness, we thought like it’s a contagious.

The disability was also a contagious uhh, people doesn’t want to come.

And.. even in the mainstream school, the umm regular school, we don’t have professionals, as well as uh, as well uh human resources was limited, so… the uh severe children, they couldn’t join the school.

That’s how we started uhh, that’s why we thought, like, opportunities should be given to every kind of children.

And we have in our mind that once opportunity is given to them, they can excel. So with that purpose, again, we shifted it into a special school.

And now we have been running for uhh 13 years now.

We have around 35 to 40 students at the moment uhh with th- various disabilities and uhh we have 15 staff looking after them and the classes are divided into uh senior, junior, like that.

And uh some students are coming just for therapies.

And some are here for vocational trainings, as well.

The student teache- teacher ratio is around 1 is to 9, or say 10.

And uhh we have uhh around 6 to.. 10 HI students which, for which we have a sign language interpreter.

And also uhh one of the teacher is deaf herself, so she’s the one who’s looking after the deaf children, teaching them the sign language and all.

Our curriculum, we, it’s based on uhh individualised education program.

Uhh since their uhh, their disabilities are varied, we don’t have a- a static regular curriculum.

So what we do is we do, we give out uhh IEP for each child, so it’s like one-to-one, or more or less one-to-one, uhh giving personal tuitions to them.

Uhh since they have no placement, we have to uhh, we have introduced vocational uh courses as well.

Our children have severe disabilities, and they are not able to go and join a mainstream school.

And also there are no placement where uh people can employ them, so it’s a burden.

We have uhh introduced vocational courses, and uhh some of them are doing very well.

And… it’s uh we have already employed some of our students.

Now, like uhh who are into tailoring, they’re able to uhh stitch apparels and uhh we are able to sell the products.

And then uhh the- the certain percentage of the product that has been sold, ma- that have, which are made by them, we uhh have opened up their accounts

Apart from our s- academic uhh curriculum and all, we do have a outreach program.

Uhh why we started this was that there was a need, since we don’t have, a like earlier I say, since we don’t have any awareness camp and all.

And uhh many people are still umm unaware of this uhh disability.

Kohima and Dimapur, we get all the opportunities.

And for the mid-land, from India, even if people come, the resource person, hardly they go to other parts of the… district.

The road travelling is not good, the road condition is very bad and the facilities are very bad, so people doesn’t want to go there.

And many people doesn’t get this opportunity so we feel the need to reach out.

And uh most of our um people doesn’t have this medical certificate and since they don’t have any medical certificate, since they di- don’t have any UDID, they don’t avail the uh schemes or any umm grant that has been uhh provided by the government to them, since they don’t have any documents.

So we go out to create awareness that uh disability is not a curse,
that children uh with disability can be educated, can be trained uh once opportunity is given to them, as well as ummm uhh in- also to help them uhh to avail all those uh opportunities that has been given to them by the government.

We organise a- a medical camp to them because the bed-ridden children or the people with disabilities, those are severe ones, the parents cannot bring them, and it’s very far.

So we go out from village to village to reach out to them, as well as educating the parents: Ummm talking to them, uh like sensitising them about uh disabilities, uhh that is how we do
And even in the uhh I mean umm society, like the social gatherings, the church, we take them out.

We encourage the children, the church, umm umm the public sectors and all to come forward and work together for the upliftment of disability.

Tha- that is one of the reason why we go for outreach.

Uhh we are continuously uhh looking forward for support, financial support, specially to… reach out to the unreached.

Because when we go there, the parents has to come, we have to provide everything to them.

And it’s not easy for a parents because we cannot go to village to village because it’s very remote.

It’s so we have to bring them, collect them in one place to organise this kind of program.

And we really need financial support, so we are looking forward for that.

The little joys and the little achievements th- that makes us happy,

For people it may not be uhh significant, they may not notice it, but for us, the children learning to uhh hold their hanky and wipe their saliva, those are big achievements for us.

And also the children learning to sit still in their chairs, those are big achievements for us.

And uhh our achievement may not be trophies, but uhh seeing the satisfaction of the parents, those are a- our big achievements for our school.