Two visually impaired siblings from south Kashmir’s Kulgam district are breaking the barriers and have taken upon themselves to uplift the community of specially-abled people.
The duo is pursuing higher education and motivating their community members to do the same.Ruhi Jan, 26 of Hanjan area of Kulgam district has a masters degree in Education and has recently qualified the National Eligibility Test (NET).
“I dreamt of becoming an assistant professor to teach and help the students who face various kinds of disabilities and instead of being a burden on the society, I wanted to serve the society so I chose to become an assistant professor,” she said.
While studying masters at the Kashmir University, Jan says that she faced a lot of difficulties in the beginning. “I knew no one there and no one knew about my disability, so going from hostel to the campus was a challenging task for me but slowly other students came to know about me and two girls namely Sobia Jan and Fazila Bashir became my close friends and helped me in everything. Sobia was the one to instill the idea of NET exams in me and motivated me whenever I felt discouraged,” says Ruhi with a smile on her face.
Aqib Rehman, 24 is her younger brother and is an IAS aspirant. He has completed his bachelors in arts (BA) from Kashmir University. After spending a year at the Government Degree College Kulgam, he sensed things were going south for him.
“I wrote an application to the college principal and requested him to allow me to study from home as it was very difficult for me to move from one building to the other in order to attend the classes. This motivated me to appear for Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams, so I can make the education system better for the people of my community and make them aware of their rights given to them by the constitution and the World Disability Rights,” says Aqib.
Four years back, Aqib was associated with a non-governmental organisation where he taught specially-abled students to operate computers and motivated them to pursue education.
Aqib and his friends have started an online initiative to help specially- abled people across Kashmir whom they have never physically met. “People like us find it difficult to appear in exams because we need to find someone who can accompany us in exam centres as our scribe and this gave me an idea to start an online initiative and help people who have different disabilities to cope up with the situation,” said Aqib.
“Our online platform ‘Online Volunteers for Specially Abled’ provides help in many aspects for the people of our community. We arrange writers for those who are appearing for exams and promote those who have done something inspiring,” said Aqib.
“We will also be creating a YouTube channel to provide online classes to the specially-abled people and we hope that by providing education, we can uplift our forsaken brothers and sisters,” Aqib said.
