NAB India Centre for Blind Women and Disability Studies envisioned a dream of financial independence, increased self-worth, and happiness for every blind girl in India.
The year 2002, gave shape to our dream and ever since, NAB India Centre has empowered thousands of blind women in India.
Deeply moved by the research findings of a study on ‘Status of Blind Women in India’ carried out by NAB and Asian Blind Union, Ms. Anuradha Mohit Dalmia (Director, National Institute for the Empowerment of Person with Intellectual Disability- NIEPID, Govt. of India) and Mrs. Shalini Khanna (Founder-Director, NAB India, Centre for Blind Women & Disability Studies), National Association for the Blind-India, Mumbai – decided to set up this centre to make every blind woman independent. The study brought to light the deeper vulnerabilities and the state of deprivation for blind women residing across the country.
Poverty clubbed with blindness for a woman made her an absolute social & family outcast which needed a different approach for rehabilitation and hence came into being the NAB India Centre for Blind Women & Disability studies.
Mrs. Sodhi left her budding career as a Qualitative Researcher, at corporate Market Research to embark on her life’s calling to bring a change to the invisible blind women and accepted to start a Centre for Blind Women in Delhi offered by the National Association for the Blind India in 2002. She had 1 employee and a 60-year-old premise (donated by a generous couple, the late Mr. and Mrs. Saradindu Basu) needing extensive repairs, and an extreme lack of funds to work for an un-understood cause was the biggest challenge.
In 2002, there was no precedent for a centre to work only for blind women and upskill them therefore, No one had any knowledge of any skills that could be adopted, apart from age-old chair caning and chalk making.
Initially, no volunteers accepted to work as the possibility of blind women working in the Corporate and mainstream was found too idealistic by them.
Another challenge was to get blind women beneficiaries to travel to the centre. Mrs. Sodhi’s experience had exposed to her, their total lack of mobility without training. On their own, they could not move an inch outside the home. Hence, she fought her way with the authorities to start a 2 room hostel for 12 blind girls on the premises. With no resources to run the hostel and pay for food, somehow with donations, she started with 1 girl trainee.
With no funds to pay qualified staff either from professional fields, she started investing in her own trained blind women to work with her and her first two employees hired were blind women themselves. And the institute started growing slowly. With the help of Microsoft, the first unit was set up as a cyber café for the blind in 2003 and slowly she found another donor to open a small handicraft unit. Since then, Mrs. Sodhi has been diligently working as the Founder and Director of NAB Centre for Blind Women, New Delhi, endeavoring to open new paths for blind women in India.
