Soni is a 13 years teenager from the Muslim community of Terai region, Banke. She was born with a hearing impairment and is second among the 8 siblings. Considering her passion to study, she was sent to a private school during her pre-primary level by her parents. Though regular at school, she was compelled to drop out due to the absence of resources and skills to teach children with disabilities in the school. Later, she was not sent to the school as her parents thought she could not study as they were not aware of the services and facilities in resource classes where she could be admitted and learn with friendly approaches. So, she could not continue the school yet she wanted to.
She was spending her days by getting involved and supporting in daily household chores such as feeding cattle, cleaning, cooking and even helping her parents in the field. She used local self-learned sign language to communicate with her parents, brothers and sisters at home. She is not comfortable communicating with others as the language she has been using is not common sign language that everyone can understand.
Seeing Soni’s eagerness to learn the Big Sister (Community girl youth volunteer) got her to the Bridge Class (Informal class for 9 months) in her community. A Bridge Class facilitator supported her to learn basic numbers, alphabets, and words in the class. Though there was a limitation of skills with facilitators to guide Soni to understand any topic they discussed in class, Soni still came to the class regularly with her exercise copy and pen and copied all the letters, numbers, and words exactly from the whiteboard and books. She loves writing and her handwriting is neat and clean. She is also fond of drawing the things around her, especially she likes to draw Mehendi designs in her copy.
Soni has been getting regular mentoring support from her Big Sisters for getting an education from Bridge Class and life skills education for her development. The Big sisters were regularly visiting her house for support and also provided counseling to her parents to send her to the resource class where she could get enrolled and continue her education. Initially, her parents were not convinced to send their daughter to the school as she needed to stay in the school hostel. But after many visits and series of counseling to her parents, they agreed to send Soni to the resource school. She got admitted to the school in Khajura, Banke, Nepal Rashtriya Adharbhut Basic school and resumed her study. Now, she gets support from National Volunteer for learning sign language that is supplementing and speeding up her learning in school. She is very happy with this change that has happened in her life and is determined to continue her study. Nowadays, she is staying in a school hostel with her friends and getting involved in various extra activities such as remedial classes, games, crafts,s, etc.
Soni is an example now for her community (Muslim) in Banke as girls can go to school and event people with impairment can also study if there is an appropriate learning environment, Where the people think and practice, girls shouldn’t go to school, should confine within 4 walls of the house, should get married in early age, etc.
Soni’s strong passion to learn: