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Tag: ColorsKit

  • Rangam Hosts Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Vocational Skills Training and Disability Inclusion in India

    Rangam Hosts Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Vocational Skills Training and Disability Inclusion in India

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    Rangam hosts a roundtable to discuss the challenges facing the disability community in India, as well as identify solutions through collaboration with partners in the US who specialize in vocational skills development and employability programs.


    VADODARA, India, August 28, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
    ColorsAcademy, Rangam’s offshore skills training and career development center for children and young adults with disabilities, convened a round table on Friday, August 10 in Vadodara, Gujarat. The conference, held at the premises of ColorsAcademy, was attended by special educators, parents of children with disabilities, and representatives from local as well as national disability support groups.

    Among the guests were Manju Kaushal, Founder of a local parents group for individuals with disabilities; Radha Tandon, Director of the Praangan Center for Children with Special Educational Needs (SEN); Dr. Sonal Shah, Trustee, Medical Director and Coordinator at the Matushree Parsanba Charitable Trust/Sankalp Centre for Children with Disabilities; Pravir Lal, member of the governing board at Sankalp; N. K. Chawla, Vice President of Disha Autism Centre; and Priyanka Biradar, social activist. Merry Barua, Director of Action for Autism and National Centre for Autism (India), and Anita Narayan Iyer, Founder, Managing Trustee, and Chief Volunteer of the EKansh Trust in Pune, also joined the conference through video.

    The purpose of the roundtable was to understand the challenges and learn from each other through collaboration. We would like to bring the best training programs and the right resources to India, in order to accomplish our mission of Employment for Everyone. However, to be able to do so, we have to find the right partners who can tell us about best practices, evidence-based methodologies, and the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ we should follow when working with a marginalized community striving to find sustainable work in the open job market.

    Nish Parikh, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer, Rangam

    The senior leadership team at Rangam, headed by CEO and Chief Innovation Officer Nish Parikh, made a presentation of Rangam’s global strategy and efforts aimed at developing innovative tools, programs, and services to facilitate vocational and life-skills development for individuals with disabilities as they prepare for employment.

    “It was an honor to personally meet the game changers who are working tirelessly to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities in India. They are doing an amazing job on their own. The purpose of the round table was to understand the challenges and learn from each other through collaboration. We would like to bring the best training programs and the right resources to India, in order to accomplish our mission of Employment for Everyone. However, to be able to do so, we have to find the right partners who can tell us about best practices, evidence-based methodologies, and the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ we should follow when working with a marginalized community striving to find sustainable work in the open job market,” Nish Parikh said.

    Parikh further stated that ColorsAcademy would like to tap into local, community-based employment programs – an approach that differs from Rangam’s nationwide hiring programs in corporate America. “There is a vast pool of talent with unique abilities in India. We need to start working with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and employers to identify, train, and employ talented job seekers. In order to start that process, we have developed a plan to collaborate with local manufacturing and retail businesses,” he explained.

    Anita Narayan Iyer put forward the idea of reverse engineering as a practical way to meet the needs of employers. “The primary purpose of skilling individuals with disabilities is to find them jobs. However, we are currently skilling them to a certain extent before sending them to companies, saying that this is what our candidates can do for you. We have to work the other way around. We need to have hiring managers come over to skilling centers [like ColorsAcademy], meet candidates in person, look at their skillsets, and work out the best job profiles for these special talents.”

    Merry Barua discussed the complexities of getting people with autism to work and applauded the efforts of Rangam toward creating a system of inclusive employment utilizing technology and collaborative strategies. She also emphasized the need to educate and empower parents.

    “About three years ago, Rangam ran a successful pilot program at Sankalp for two months. We found that our children were attracted to the audio-visual stimulation provided by ColorsKit,” Pravir Lal said. “ColorsKit was very helpful in tracking the progress of children who are non-verbal. We hope to work with Rangam in further developing this program and taking it to the next level.”

    N. K. Chawla touched upon the importance of having local training and therapy centers for individuals with developmental disabilities. He also thanked Rangam for offering support to students at Disha through the ColorsKit series of educational apps.

    “The roundtable was an appreciable initiative to get the key stakeholders to interact with each other. We should continue to organize similar events in the future, since sharing knowledge multiplies it,” Radha Tandon wrote in a thank-you note.

    Also read: Rangam’s Offshore Skills Training Center for Children and Young Adults With Special Needs Celebrates First Anniversary

    About Rangam
    Established in 1995, Rangam is a high-performing diverse supplier of enterprise-wide staffing services in IT, clinical, scientific, healthcare, engineering, government, finance and administrative sectors. Rangam is a certified WMBE that has consistently grown year over year while establishing a history of providing exceptional service to clients. We pride ourselves on developing a culture of inclusion and collaboration through innovation in special education, disability hiring and re-employment of veterans.

    We at Rangam improve the quality of life for our candidates while providing exceptional service to our clients. We do this by delivering an integrated recruitment solution that combines technology, training, and education to our candidates while providing our clients with a large, diverse network of qualified personnel options. We adhere to a philosophy of “empathy drives innovation” in everything we do.

    For more information about Rangam, please visit https://rangam.com.

    About ColorsAcademy
    ColorsAcademy is where pre-academic learning needs of children with special needs are met with ColorsKit – an award-winning special education platform that helps children and young adults with disabilities acquire social, motor, executive functioning, self-regulation, and various other vocational as well as life-skills that are necessary for living and working with dignity and a certain level of independence.

    For more information about ColorsAcademy, please visit http://www.colorsacademy.com.

    Source: Rangam

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  • Rangam’s Offshore Skills Training Center for Children and Young Adults With Special Needs Celebrates First Anniversary

    Rangam’s Offshore Skills Training Center for Children and Young Adults With Special Needs Celebrates First Anniversary

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    Their little eyes sparkled with joy as they received beautiful images that captured moments from their learning activities and interactions with special educators. For Dhyan, Rushel, Ragini, Esha, Siddharth and their friends, it was a day to celebrate a year of their small but significant achievements as individuals with unique skills and amazing abilities.

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jul 11, 2018


    VADODARA, India, July 11, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
    The journey of ColorsAcademy began on July 10 a year ago, with a mission to bring best-in-class assistive technology tools to India while providing support to children with disabilities at every step of their social, cognitive and functional development. Yesterday, the staff at Rangam and ColorsAcademy got together with a group of 5- to 23-year-old students with autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and learning disability to mark the first anniversary of their skills training center in Vadodara, Gujarat. The students were accompanied by their parents or guardians.

    In one year, ColorsAcademy has made major strides toward its mission. Four special educators have been appointed to provide pre-academic, academic, pre-vocational and functional training that is designed to enhance social, motor, executive functioning, self-care and various other life-skills. The training is delivered through ColorsKit – a collaborative, award-winning program comprising vocational and life-skills assessment and training tools. Equipped with video-, audio- and touchpoint-based prompts as well as data collection and analysis methodologies, ColorsKit utilizes the applied behavior analysis (ABA) model of intervention to evaluate skill gaps, provide highly tailored skills training, and track the progress of each student.

    We are currently working with a few special needs schools in Vadodara. We would love to have an opportunity to expand our services in other cities in India.

    Kedar Binivale, Business Development Manager and Support Coordinator at ColorsAcademy

    The center is equipped with state-of-the-art assistive devices like tablets and an interactive kiosk. ColorsAcademy has five intervention rooms for one-on-one sessions and one quiet, colorful play area for motor skills training and group physical activities.

    There are reasons to feel upbeat about the quality of intervention at ColorsAcademy, as is evident from the story of a seven-year-old boy with learning disability. “In the beginning, he could barely tell one color from another. But after three months of personalized training and practice, he showed remarkable improvement in his ability to correctly identify different colors,” said Uma Muley, Special Educator at ColorsAcademy.

    He is not the only student who has responded well to training and behavioral reinforcements.

    A 15-year-old boy with cognitive and pre-vocational skill deficits has shown improvement in skills like auditory memory and handwriting after few a months of training. “His language skills have also improved,” observed Vidhi Patel, Special Educator.

    Special Educator Himanshu Gayakwad works with a seven-year-old girl with cerebral palsy. “She is now able to understand voice commands and facial expressions. She is more comfortable in social situations than she was earlier,” Himanshu noted.

    Finding meaningful employment for individuals with disabilities after they become adults is often an enormous challenge for caregivers, schools and support service providers. In line with Rangam’s “Employment for Everyone“ mission, ColorsAcademy has hired two individuals with special needs as in-house staff. They are providing support to special educators in content search, preparation, development and deployment.

    “We are currently working with a few special needs schools in Vadodara. We would love to have an opportunity to expand our services in other cities in India,” said Kedar Binivale, Business Development Manager and Support Coordinator at ColorsAcademy.

    A report published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India reveals that 26.8 million people in the country have physical, mental, sensory or intellectual impairments which prevent them from fully participating in social and professional activities. While the support services for individuals with disabilities have significantly improved over the past two decades, a pervasive lack of awareness and understanding about autism and other disabilities continues to pose major problems in diagnosing developmental delays at an early age.

    About Rangam
    Established in 1995, Rangam is a high-performing diverse supplier of enterprise-wide staffing services in IT, clinical, scientific, healthcare, engineering, government, finance and administrative sectors. Rangam is a certified WMBE that has consistently grown year over year while establishing a history of providing exceptional service to clients. We pride ourselves on developing a culture of inclusion and collaboration through innovation in special education, disability hiring and re-employment of veterans.

    We at Rangam improve the quality of life for our candidates while providing exceptional service to our clients. We do this by delivering an integrated recruitment solution that combines technology, training and education to our candidates while providing our clients with a large, diverse network of qualified personnel options. We adhere to a philosophy of “empathy drives innovation” in everything we do.

    For more information about Rangam, please visit https://rangam.com.

    Source: Rangam Consultants Inc.

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  • ColorsKit Pilot Program Kicks Off in Gujarat’s Special School

    ColorsKit Pilot Program Kicks Off in Gujarat’s Special School

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    Insufficient bandwidth of services and resources, inadequate staff training and a pervasive lack of awareness have always posed enormous challenges when it comes to ensuring high-quality education and occupational support for individuals with special needs in India. Times, however, are changing now for the better.

    Press Release
    –

    Dec 24, 2015


    Vadodara, Gujarat, December 24, 2015 (Newswire.com)
    –
    ​​​ColorsKit, winner of AT&T Civic App Challenge Award in 2015 and Verizon Powerful Answers Award in 2014, is introduced at Genius Super Kids, a division of Genius English Medium School in Rajkot, Gujarat, as part of WebTeam Corporation’s vision to improve special education practices and learning outcomes for differently-abled children and adults in under-served countries.

    The goal of the program is to deliver early intervention and support services, besides spreading autism awareness in urban India. The ColorsKit toolkit is designed to optimize various self-regulatory skills in individuals with autism and other special needs. The automatic data collection technology embedded in all ColorsKit apps assists special educators in setting individualized education program (IEP) goals in an efficient way.

    The ColorsKit team is looking forward to work with the Genius team. Our focus will initially be on gaining an understanding of the challenges and needs typical to Indian children

    Dhara Desai, Program Coordinator

    “The first phase of this pilot program will involve 27 children on the autism spectrum, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy and other conditions. As most of them need support with activities of daily living, the life skills program can be very helpful if it is tweaked to match our curriculum. For the time being, we are working on the early intervention component of ColorsKit,” said Bijal Harkhani, special education teacher at Genius Super Kids.

    “The ColorsKit team is looking forward to work with the Genius team. Our focus will initially be on gaining an understanding of the challenges and needs typical to Indian children,” program coordinator Dhara Desai said, assuring that changes in the format, features and content of the program will be made as and when required.

    “We can get you the resources and expertise necessary not only to raise awareness but also to make optimum use of your own intervention and teaching methods,” WebTeam CEO Nish Parikh emphasized in an open call to teachers and therapists working with the special needs community in India.

    Addressing the issue of lack of awareness among the mainstream population, Mr. Parikh urged Indian parents to frankly discuss autism and other developmental conditions with their children. “Autism, like puberty and reproductive health, is not an uncomfortable topic in most of the U.S. households. I know many American parents who not only talk about the full spectrum of health with their adolescent kids but also encourage them to participate in community services. I would really love to see more and more Indian parents instilling a sense of mature responsibility in the future generation of this great nation.”

    Various government and non-government reports indicate that one in 250 children has autism in India. The total number of affected individuals is estimated to be 10 million.

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