Those with disabilities only need an environment that encourages them. EnAble India bridges this gap in more than one way
Every day is a new beginning, a new struggle, a new story to be written. Looking at the possibilities and not what is restricting you. These can be words of encouragement for anyone looking at disability employment.
In the Indian context, however, this encouragement isn’t enough and the picture gets grimmer due to poverty, ignorance, societal prejudices, illiteracy and lack of proper education to make the disabled skill-worthy. A cursory glance across different industries will reveal the low number of employment figures of the persons with disabilities (PWDs). Many dreams are left unfulfilled due to lack of proper training, skill sets or even awareness of the jobs available in the corporate world.
The truth is PWDs can work in all areas of workforce, just like people without disabilities. All they need is a barrier-free environment and a right workplace solution. In order to have this, it is important to take into account the person’s disability and make any appropriate or reasonable adjustments to the work environment to accommodate them.
Addressing this challenge of employability of PWDs in the corporate sector is EnAble India, a Bengaluru-based NGO that has strived to develop a training methodology by changing mindsets of stakeholders and the society at large. The organisation focuses on providing “economic independence” and “dignity” for PWDs through their employability models and workplace solutions comprising of different pre-employment services, supplemental education, counseling and support services, consultancy and training for other institutions and NGOs and technology services.
Making a difference
Started in 1999 by software engineers Shanti Raghavan and Dipesh Sutariya, EnAble India has brought about changes in attitude towards the disabled. For Raghavan, her personal experience with her brother (who lost his vision) taught her that given the right training and opportunity, a disabled person can establish himself as a professional of high caliber and be a productive employee. The disabled do not need sympathy, but a supportive environment (created together by families, the government and the society at large) to grow and fulfill their needs, potential and dreams.
Since its inception, 4,500+ persons with disabilities have found gainful employment directly, and 1,000+ through consultancy and capacity building of partner NGOs. This includes those who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, have cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, mental illness, learning disability, multiple disabilities and more. Persons with severe and multiple disabilities such as deaf blindness are included in the workforce. About 81 per cent of people with disability working in the urban area are financially supporting their families.
And over 3,000+ people across the country are beneficiaries of EnAble India’s tools, publications and content. It is also the official placement cell for the Government of Karnataka for PWDs. According to their research, more than Rs 1 Crore per person with disability is saved by PSUs, with their inclusion as a productive employee.
For their innovativeness and hard work, Raghavan has received the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, 2010, from The President of India. She has also been awarded the Ashoka fellowship by Ashoka Foundation, which believes in investing in social entrepreneurs who are practical visionaries and whose drive and creativity have the potential to bring about large-scale social change. In 2012, EnAble India won the prestigious Manthan award (South Asia and Asia Pacific 2012) for ICT enabled innovation in the e-inclusion category.
Lessons on the way
The organisation’s focus has always been to build a skilled workforce that could quickly become economically independent. This was given a boost by the higher demand for skilled workers and growth of MNCs with higher attrition rates in India. The reason behind the success of EnAble India lies in its approach, wherein through their business solution a business case is presented to companies for each candidate and the hiring managers are made aware of the factors that make the employment of PWDs viable option. Advantages of hiring a disabled person means promoting a diverse workforce, widening of the candidate pool, creating a more inclusive organisation and realising the CSR as discussed with the company.
Questions about disabilities (Will I need to spend more time training and supervising the person with disability? Do they always need someone to help them? Will persons with disability take more sick leaves because of their disability? How will they perform a specific task? ) are treated as normal reaction of an individual who has not understood disability and is not looked at with disdain.
Take the example of their collaboration with Madura Garments, which opened up jobs for visually impaired persons in the garments sector. “Traditionally, non-IT sectors have been a difficult job market for visually challenged people, with many not even getting an interview call. With this model, EnAble India could train eight people out of 16 and placed with Madura garments as box maker, buttoner, packer and so on. Four others got placed in other garment companies.
Another instance is of Thomson Reuters, who has more than 50 PWDs successfully employed in departments like market analysis, data entry, accounting and management, and recruitment.
Till date, the NGO has developed 50+ workplace solutions to help PWDs to work effectively and efficiently on par with their colleagues. According to Raghavan, these solutions and models of inclusion built for PWDs benefits all sections of society.
A collaborative platform
Over the years, EnAble India has developed its livelihood framework that has models to address the needs of all disabilities in different geographies and demographics. The organisation follows different models for catering people in non-computer and computer placements.
The NGO also came out with an “entrepreneurship development programme” after studying the local requirements in the rural sector. Training was imparted with the help of mainstream entrepreneurship training centres.
Another big shot in EnAble India’s arm is its new initiative called EnAble Academy — India's first online collaborative community initiative for mainstreaming livelihoods of persons with disabilities which is managed by visually impaired employee of EnAble India. It is a platform to bring together PWD jobseekers, companies wishing to employ, NGOs and provides different training tools, courses, certifications, tutorials and publications in the PWD space under one space. (The beta version of EnAble Academy was launched in February).
Making a difference
Boney Thomas from Thomson Reuters has been managing the creation and billing of the company’s products in the admin systems as well as training new recruits in his team. This company also provided him with easy communication tools such as Reuters Messaging, Outlook, and so on, which helped him easily interact, learn and share knowledge with people across the globe Deepa Narasimhan from Emc2, is 75 per cent disabled due to spinal muscular atrophy. Confined to a wheel chair since she was 10, Narasimhan has strength left only in her wrist and fingers, which she preserves through physiotherapy. A self-trained graphic and web designer, she has designed presentations and developed websites.
Looking back, Shanti describes this 15 years journey as full of learning, which helped change so many mindsets and development of various models to create solutions for the future disabled workforce. “In the process of working for people with disability we have realised that we are able to give motivation on how they can solve their own challenges. A person with disability becomes a change agent. By doing this, he has chance to change society’s behavior not just about disability but about dealing with challenges and being solutions oriented,” she says.