Deepam children with the building blocks they made
On
Friday February 17th, Deepam, Auroville's therapy centre for children with
special needs, celebrated 25 years.
It began in January, 1992, in the
Kuilapalayam tamarind grove beside the Auroville bakery. Concerned at the
plight of the mentally-challenged and polio-affected children from the village,
Aurovilians Marika, Franca and Appie
started a play centre three afternoons a week. They were soon joined by
Angelika, an experienced occupational therapist from Germany who had come to
visit Auroville for a year to offer therapy to Auroville children at the
Kindergarten and Transition School. “The playground’s location was far from
ideal,” she remembers. “It was next to the village’s defecation ground and out
in the open, except for a small dark thatched room with a veranda where we
could do a little something with the children.” While the others gradually
dropped out, Angelika continued – to this day.
Aro...
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