The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Working wonders with computers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 15, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Working wonders with computers

Suresh Krishnamoorthy

Six youth sparkle despite being visually-challenged

HYDERABAD: Seeing them at their workstations, putting the intricate spare parts of a computer together, nothing seems to be different. They do it ‘blindly’ and that is the impression that 11 year-old Sairam Reddy, 19 year-olds Ashwin Kumar, D. Mallesh, B. Narasimhulu, Srinivas and Santosh give.

In reality, these guys are differently-abled. While their hands move, seemingly at the speed of lightning and with uncanny precision, what is not visible is the fact that the youngsters are visually-challenged. Born to poor parents and hailing from villages in Karimnagar and Medak districts, they live and study at the Dar-Ul-Shifa Government School for the Blind.

It became possible when a team from the city unit of the 60-year-old JetKing, Computer Hardware and Networking Institute here landed at the school, looking at avenues to discharge their corporate social responsibility. When the suggestion that, instead of money or material help, they could do with vocational training to help them in life, the team selected six students based on their aptitude with technology, said Institute Director Vamshi Krishna Reddy.

Will to succeed

Given their innate talent and the will to succeed, the three month-long training by experts paid off. Now, the six youngsters have the core expertise to pull apart and put together a computer. Two of them have even been taken on the rolls of the training institute. And that is not all. Team JetKing has gone a step ahead and pooled in a fund to take care of the need of the sextet.

The six students will demonstrate their skills before Ministers Damodar Raja Narasimha (School Education) and Mukesh Goud (BC Welfare) at the Institute campus in Ameerpet here on Wednesday.

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