Meet Candy Juarez from California. I met her in a Local Sightseeing tour around Delhi. We came to know about each other so much in a very short span of time of just 1 day because she has to go for her trip to Punjab and North East part of India next day. Her life journey was very struggling and it inspired me a lot to write about her life.
She is Majoring to be a teacher for young adults with special needs. She wants to help and do something for the god-gifted childfren who needs special care and attention. She wants to build a classroom in third world country where they can live,learn,enjoy their life freely. She has been trying to help the children in every little way she can help in her home country and whereever she travels.
She had heard a lot about the India and its diverse culture where you can find people from different religions, culture, languages,traditions etc staying together peacefully at one place.
She came to India to witness the conditions of the special needs children and to volunteer her services to understand their needs and help them educate. She traveled to different parts of India like Amritsar, Delhi, North East part to see the extreme painful life of these children because of there disabilities and poverty. In India children with disabilities mainly comes under the purview of the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. Some of the issues are dealt with by the health ministry. But no single ministry has been assigned the protection of these children, which leads to varying data about occurrence of disability amongst children. In India 1.67% of the 0-19 population has a disability. 35.29% of all people living with disabilities are children. Other estimates say that India has 12 million children living with disabilities. Only 1% of children with disabilities have access to school and one third of most disabilities are preventable. Under-nutrition is a severe problem with children who suffer from cerebral palsy. In India 80% of children with disabilities will not survive past age forty.This facts has been taken from an article on childlineindia.org.in.
While on her journey to other parts of India, she got the opportunity to work for a community known as Maati Community in Kaziranga National Park in Guwahati whose main motive is to provide shelter, care and support for these specially abled children.
She told me about different incidents which happened in her young life which changed the way she thinks about the world and made her think about the ways in which she can help these children. "In my 1st grade, I met a girl with a deformity in her hand.No one wanted to touch her hand because it was different so I grabbed it and the look she gave me was amazing, it touched me and I felt like telling her that it doesnt make her any different from all of us " she told me. Another incident was about her cousin who was a special need child and they always told her that he was special growing up but she never saw it and thought he was always normal. And in the high school when she volunteered for the first time with special needs,she got so much attached that she did it for 4 years straight away.
These incidents changed the way she looks at her life and add a new meaning and purpose to her life. I hope that her dream of building a new world for these specially abled children should get true soon. I am also helping her in finding some sponsors for building a new world. We made really good friends and I wish that we will meet soon maybe in some American city.
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