Seva Setu’s work for the differently able (Part I)

3rd December is celebrated each year as the international day for the differently abled. We want to take this opportunity to share the work we have done for the differently able in the last three months. This is the first of a series of posts that we will publish on this issue.

We chose three districts of Bihar – Patna, Vaishali and Champaran as our area of work and worked towards facilitating disability pension benefits to as many differently abled as we could work with. We first identified the differently abled by conducting surveys across villages in these districts. Over these three months, we have collected details of more than 1,300 differently abled people in these areas. Out of these, around 55% people were not having any Physically Handicapped (PH) certificate – which is a must to avail any government sponsored benefits. Our first objective was to ensure all eligible candidates received their PH certificates. We have gotten 115 of them to apply for these certificates. Of these 115, 78 people have collected their PH certificates – which means they can now avail government benefits. Of these 78 people who have collected their PH certificate, we have 32 people who have applied for a pension certificate. Of these 32 people, names of 7 people have been included in the pension list of their respective villages.