People & Organizations
Vision Empower
VIDYA Y
Vidhya was born Blind, her Play was completely auditory for the initial few years. she started trying out small words mimicking others before the age of 1. Once she learnt walking, she would practice walking with the support of a wall singing various songs that she had heard. She had a keen interest in numbers and would count everything she found- mustard seeds in buttermilk and sambar, flowers that she would remove from plants, number of segments in her then favorite fruit orange, number of rice grains and so on. She then shifted to traditional play with her sighted friends- catching butterflies, hide and seek, hopscotch, ludo, snakes and ladders, Marbles, sets and so on. With her visually impaired friends in school, she enjoyed various outdoor games such as Kabbadi, KhoKho, lemon and spoon, sack race, 3-legged race and regularly participated in independence day drills . She played indoor games such as dominoes and Chinese checkers for hours. She stopped all types of play since 8th grade. In one of the probability classes during her under graduation, she had to solve problems based on cards. She had never heard of cards unlike most of her classmates. this is when she realized that she had missed a lot of play. As there is a very low representation of visually impaired people in the STEM(Science, technology, engineering and math) fields, Vidhya is now working on making STEM education accessible for visually impaired children due to her experiences studying these subjects as a blind person and her passion in this area. She is keen on making learning not only inclusive but also fun as well, by adding a play element wherever possible. Linkedin»
SUPRIYA DEY
Supriya joined Vidhya to start Vision Empower in 2017 to make Science and Math interesting for students with visual impairment. Vidhya is about three years older than her son, with whom she had spent plenty of time reliving the joy of free play and learning - both indoors and outdoors, which she had enjoyed with her brothers, growing up in Shillong. She worked for various firms as a software engineer, but took several breaks in her career to simply relish these moments at various stages of his growing up. While managing the research center for Software and IT Management at IIM Bangalore (CSITM), the research bug bit her while she engaged with scholars from across the world. In 2014, when her son joined Engineering, she applied to IIITB to learn and work more in the IT and Society, an area of passion, since long and she was glad to be accepted as a Masters by Research scholar at the age of 47! In 2017, when Vidhya graduated with a Master's in Digital Society, Supriya also graduated with a Master's by Research in IT and Society. Vision Empower has never seemed like work to Supriya. It's the fun space where working is a joy, especially driven by a purpose. With enormous inspiration from Dr Swami Manohar, Supriya feels like one of the youngest players in this team !Linkedin»
Sylvia Veeraraghavan
Sylvia have always enjoyed playing, and have been fascinated with the idea of learning through fun. Have played different games in my childhood, being blessed with three more siblings, we as a family of six, had a great time playing with each other, ensuring that age and gender never came in the way. All games be it Card Games, Board Games such as Scrabble or Carom-board or Outdoor Games such as Cricket and Baddy were all indulged with fervent enthusiasm. Truly enjoy being part of the MSR Team and making a difference to the differently abled among us through play.
Professionally, have worked in the IT space for more than 2 decades, was always passionate about working in the development sector. When I got an opportunity to work with Janaagraha Centre For Citizenship and Democracy to use my skills and make a difference, in late 2013, took the job as a welcome change. After a 5 year stint with JCCD, when I was looking for more on-ground work in the sector, was blessed to meet my good friend Supriya Dey who was Co-Founder of Vision Empower. Has been a great year working with Vision Empower and MSR in bringing Learning to Visually Impaired students through Play. Linkedin»