About Noida Deaf Society

Noida Deaf Society (NDS) is a registered not for profit organization working with a vision of providing quality education and specialized vocational training leading to gainful employ¬ment to hearing im-paired (Deaf ) children and youth. From five students in 2005, NDS is to¬day reaching out to over 1000 students every year across five centres in four states i.e Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan & U.P. NDS has been successful in transforming the industry perception and carving a niche for deaf youth in the industry. Over 780 of trained students from NDS are today working in some of the most leading companies across sectors ranging from Hospitali¬ty, Retail, ITes, Outsourcing, Banking, Print and Publishing, Education, Textile and Manufactur¬ing among others.

Mission: To empower and enable the deaf community to develop their capabilities so that they can lead self-reliant lives and be a productive partner of our society.

Vision: To mainstream deaf children and youth in society by providing quality education and specialized vocational training leading to gainful employment.

Note from the Founder & General Secretary, Ruma Roka

Another year gone and we continue to learn, striving to better ourselves and the lives of the young chil-dren and youth that we work with.

In keeping with our vision of making IT accessible to deaf students, we created the first ever customized, visual curriculum for the MS Office and Hardware Networking Courses. These two programs have seen a tremendous response from the students who come here clearly very excited to be part of a ‘real’ interac-tive classroom session where they are able to not only respond to the teacher but ask questions as well.

Bringing in technology to further enhance learning we brought in the Educomp Smart Class – a multime-dia K12 classroom education program. It is showing wonderful results in our Primary and Supplementary Programs where the Class is being used to deliver NCERT content to the students. Feedback from the teachers and the students has been very optimistic and hopefully we will be developing on this further in the years to come.

Slowly developing capability of our students we introduced the MS Office course at our Hisar center as well and I am happy to share that the performance of the Hisar students is way ahead of students at the Noida center!

Employment – Our Mission and the key word engraved in the hearts of the entire NDS Team. This year in a new initiative we made inroads into the E-commerce business and facilitated employment for 16 stu-dents at LensKart an E-commerce company taking the total employed to 174. We hope that through this we would be able to motivate and partner with other E- businesses as well.

I hope all who have been with us so far will continue to walk with us in this journey and I am deeply grateful to all who have placed their faith in our work, and would like to assure them that we will not let them down.

Thank you once again!

Ruma Roka Founder & General SecretaryNoida Deaf Society

1

Board of Trustee

Our Board of Trustees comprises of professionals with a rich and diverse experience in their respective areas of work.

Neeraj Agarwal : Neeraj is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi. He has 28 years work ex-peri¬ence in managing, developing and delivering learning content across various industries. Currently engaged in training school drop-outs, and helping them get employment in Northern India. In 2006, Neeraj set up the NIIT Foundation. NIIT Foundation, has experimented with models for providing quality education to under-served youth in rural India as well as urban slums.

Ruma Roka (Founder) : Ruma has been working with the Deaf community for the past 9 years. She is trained in sign language from Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped (AYJNIHH). Her deep passion for the deaf community has driven NDS’s growth from five students to an outreach of over 1000 children and youth every year across five centres.

She was the proud recipient of the prestigious National Centre for Promotion of Employment of Disabled person’s (NCPEDP) Shell Helen Keller Award in the year 2008 for exemplary contribution in employment of people with disabilities. She was also awarded “Super Idol Award” in the year 2010 under the category of ‘Idol Makers’ by a prominent news channel in India, IBN 7 and Bajaj Alliance. She has been invited to speak at various forums including the prestigious TED@Bangalore 2012 and TEDx Gateway Mumbai 2012

Sunil Kalra : A commerce graduate from Delhi University, Sunil presently works with a Delhi based MNC as Manager Finance since 2008. He handles all financial matters including tax planning and finalization of accounts for the Company. He has more than 24 years of experience in this field.

Usha Vardarajan : Usha has been a successful business woman both in the field of exports and retail. With no formal business training, her sheer determination powered the growth of her business for over 27 years. She was awarded the “Woman Entrepreneur of the Year” in 1999 by the PHD Chamber of Com-merce.

Mathew Zacharia : Works with NIIT Limited as General Manager. He has over 22 years experience in the field of Multimedia and Graphic Design.

Vivek Rana : Mr. Vivek has been with NIIT group for 21 years. Started his career with a UPS manufacturing company and soon shifted to engineering support services in an IT education company. Currently he is heading the commercial function of NIIT Yuva Jyoti Ltd. He is responsible for all center creations, upkeep of the centers & catering to the needs of the centers and vendor management. Mr Vivek is a co-author in as many as four Patents granted for the work they carried out at NIIT. He has more than 30 years of expe-rience in this field.

Dheeraj Bhushan : Spanning a career of 19+ years primarily in the Hospitality industry, Mr. Bhushan has also worked in Aviation sector. This experience has covered all aspects of HRD i.e. Strategy, Workforce plan¬ning, Performance management, Change management, compensation & benefits, employee rela-tions and most importantly merger and acquisition.

Mr. Bhushan is a Graduate from Delhi University. He did his MBA in Human Resources Management with Specialization in Human Resources/ Information Technology from Amity Business School, Noida (1998-2001). His career started with the Indian Railways as Executive- Admin in June 1994. He is currently at Shangri-La’s – Eros Hotel since September 2009 as Director of Human Resources.

2

Total Impact 1006Female Learners 201Male Learners 805Total Employment 174Females Employed 18Males Employed 156Exposure 362Pre Employment Training 419

OVERVIEW

3

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1. We are proud to share that NDS has come up with the first-ever curricula for deaf students and train-ers in Hardware and Networking and MS office. The curricula were developed with painstaking efforts of Ms. Ruma Roka with technical support from professionals in this field and Instructional Designers and content developers. The courses are specific for deaf trainer and deaf students only and are very visual, using PowerPoint presentations to cater to the needs and challenges of the student.

2. After the successful completion of one year of our outreach centre in Hisar, we also started MS Office training for the students which is ongoing and has been received well.

3. NDS is continuously looking for new and innovative ways of teaching. Further to our efforts, we have successfully started the Educomp Smart Classes for our students in Sectors 36 and 29, Noida. Sub-jects that are being taught are Maths, English, Hindi and Science. Educomp Smart Classes comprises of well researched, mapped-to-curriculum digital modules (K-12 Program) enabling visual learning which is ideally suited for Deaf learners. The objective is to develop a strong academic foundation for the students.

4. Awards and recognition always motivates one to work harder and create a bigger impact. Last year our founder Ruma Roka was awarded with the National Women Excellence ‘Nav Kiran Award’ in the category of Vocational Training and Economic Rehabilitation of Hearing Impaired. This prestigious award is recognition for Ruma and her immense contribution to the Deaf Community. The Award was organized by WIN- Women’s International Network who works for Women and Children Issues in 30 countries worldwide.

5. Many of our students apply in Government sectors for employment. To help them in the process, we have started a new training programme for preparing students with the application procedures and also helping them with exam preparations.

6. This year for the first time, we have also introduced the Student of the Year award. The award is called Smt. Nirmala Das Award for Excellence and was sponsored by Mr. B.S Das-Chairman, Fairwood Group in memory of his wife, Mrs. Nirmala Das. The students were judged on the basis of their academic per-formance, regular attendance and feedback from the teachers. Anjali Yadav and Jatinder Kalsi were the recipients of this award this year.

4

Some of the new companies we have partnered with:

• Lenskart: This is the first ever e-portal partnership. Candidates were selected for departments rang-ing from Quality Check, Packaging, Electrical and Image editing. A capacity building session was also taken with the employees on working with deaf team members.

• Info Pro: Impressed with the work of NDS, Info Pro showed their keen interest in employing our students. The students were tested on their technical skills and two of our students are working with them in the design and IT support team.

• Fidelity Information Services (FIS) is another IT/ ITeS company to join the league of our employment partners

• RateGain IT Solutions: The Company conducted an aptitude and English evaluation for our students followed by interviews and hired our students for mapping the rating of the hotels.

• Rural Shores is an organization dedicated to create employment in villages in India. They have hired two candidates from NDS. The candidates have joined as Business Development Associates and their work profile majorly includes Data Entry & Scanning of the Vouchers, Challans & Bills.

• Domino’s: A big breakthrough came when our year old partner Domino’s Pizza expressed its wish to hire deaf for its outlet in small towns. This was a proud moment for NDS as many of our students be-long to small villages and towns and having an opportunity to work close to their family saves them from out of pocket expenses.

• Another new Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) to join the list of employers was Joost Foods who em-ployed two of our boys for their outlets. Within a month we received an encouraging feedback. Tak-ing the pilot to the next stage, the company initiated recruitment of the second batch.

• Xylem is an award winning exporter of innovative paper products. They have employed 18 of our students in various profiles such as packaging, quality check and data entry.

• Our old partners such as Sage Publications, Proof of performance, Axis Bank and DS Group came forward with a wish to hire more deaf people after being impressed by the previous deaf employees. The teams and the peers shared that they are really pleased with the dedication, focused approach and performance of our Deaf candidates at work.

PLACEMENTS

Finding employment for our trained deaf students is of prime importance for NDS. Every year we strive to forge partnerships with new corporates to ensure that more students can find placements. Over time, we have built strong relationships with the corporates which is evident by the fact that same companies want to hire more deaf students.

This year we were able to successfully place 174 students in over 40 companies

5

Sign Language and Feedback sessions

To ensure an effective communication between the deaf employees and the employer, NDS makes it a point to have a functional sign language session with the team members at the work place.

We also ensure regular feedback session with our current employers. The objective is threefold- to understand the employer’s experience of working with deaf youth; to learn how the youth are coping and lastly to address gaps if any based on feedback from both.

INDUSTRY SPEAKS

“We have already hired hearing impaired students from NDS and we are extremely satisfied with their work. One amazing thing about these students is that they are always smiling and willing to go the extra mile. We congratulate NDS on their good work.” Col Parvesh Malhotra, Associate General Manager, Devyani Food International, India

“As part of Shangri-La’s ‘Embrace’ Programme, we have already been employing hearing impaired candi-dates and they are amongst the top performers. This was my first exposure to seeing how hearing im-paired youth are trained and prepared. We are quite pleased and reassured with the effort that goes in to training the hearing impaired youth at Noida Deaf Society. We wish them all the best and we will continue to partner with NDS going forward.” Mr. Farhat Jamal, Area Manager & General Manager, Shangri-La’s - Eros Hotel

“Adobe has been supporting Noida Deaf Society since 2007 through our desktop publishing software, funding and volunteering. I am amazed at the impact that NDS has been able to create for the deaf youth and Adobe is very proud to be associated with this effort. We look forward to our continued relationship.” Mr. Naresh Gupta, Managing Director, Adobe Systems India “These employees are looking at scanned images of personal cheques. Any transaction that goes wrong would mean money getting debited from the wrong account and affects our service levels. This is high-end work.

When I look at it from an HR perspective - the attrition rates - these people are hardworking. So it’s a win-win situation”. Mr. Manpreet Singh, Head of Employee Relations at the Indian headquarters, FIS

6

ACTIVITIES

AWARENESS AND SENSITIZATION SESSION

In order to sensitize people about the deaf community, NDS organizes visits and sensitization sessions for various stakeholders- Corporate, Civil Society organizations, Colleges and Schools. These institutions are invited to spend time at NDS to understand what the deaf are capable of, what role NDS plays in their life and how they can act as a resource for us. This year some of the significant sessions were:

1. This year NDS was covered in various media platforms. BBC India covered a story on NDS and how it has helped the deaf people in India to overcome the problem of unemployment. NDS was also called for a panel discussion on employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The panel discussion was organized by CNN-IBN in partnership with American India Foundation and Being Human. The Hindu also covered a story on deafness in India and what role NDS has played in finding employment opportunities of deaf people in companies. Civil Society Online also shared a story of the journey of NDS. Such stories have also played a positive role in reaching out to people and having a greater impact.

2. AIF America invited Ms. Ruma Roka to speak about NDS cause at their annual gala in the USA. Ruma along with one of our students Ms. Geeta Hasija, now working at Axis Bank, went to attend the gala where Ruma spoke about the back ground of deaf community in India and NDS. The talks were well received and the large audiences across the three cities were very moved by the story of our journey and appreciated our work. Geeta also shared her journey of change, being a girl from a village in His-ar to becoming an empowered woman with independence and dignity.

3. NASSCOM Foundation organized a Leadership Round Table Conference and Ruma was invited to present a session on “Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities at workplace”. Ruma in her presentation talked about various myths associated with Deafness, the abilities of Deaf youth and how they can be of value add at work place. Through various success stories of NDS students, Ruma made a strong case of Persons with Disability (PwD) hiring. It was a wonderful opportunity as the conference was attended by leading IT companies and many showed keen interest in starting employment initiative for NDS students

4. Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs managed by Central Square Foundation and Teach for India organized its Roundtable Series 2013: CSR as a Value Proposition for Education in India. Ms. Ruma Roka was invited to be a Panelist and spoke on – Role of Partnerships for effective CSR in Education. Forums like these help us forward our larger vision of working with Deaf community. It also helps us interact with other organization working in the development sector.

5. Ms. Ruma Roka was also invited to be part of - Workshop for promoting sustainable, outcome driven training for People with Disabilities at National Skill Development Corporation in collaboration with Ministry of Social Justice. She shared her inputs on employing Deaf people into the mainstream com-panies, the process, challenges, best practices and way forward.

6. Delhi Police department also invited NDS to talk about the problems deaf women face while dealing with police personnel. The session was attended by very senior Police officials and around 500 police personnel. Citing own experience with the deaf women and their issues, Ms. Ruma Roka emphasized that the police officials should learn sign language and develop the correct attitude towards deaf women. It would also help them to develop an approach which would make deaf women comfort-able communicating with them.

7. ‘Equality for Deaf’, organized by Indian Deaf Youth Forum of All Indian Federation for the Deaf also invited NDS to talk about Equal Opportunities for Deaf People. With great passion Ms. Ruma Roka talked about how deaf should get equal opportunities and that the government should ensure im-plementation of equality policies and should accept Sign Language.

8. Other sensitization sessions included visit from students of Jawahar Lal University, Ali Yavar Jung Na-tional Institute for the Hearing Handicapped and Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. Fellows from Teach for India are also annual visitors of NDS.

7

Capacity Building Session by Mr. Dilip Deshmukh; Found-er and Convenor, Deaf Foundation, Ichalkaranji (Maha-rashtra)

Dr. Dilip Deshmukh came to NDS to meet the students and their families with an objective of educating them about the importance of Sign Language in the lives of deaf people.Dr. Deshmukh has been an avid preacher of Bilingualism. He believes that the development of any individual is possible through communication and language forms an essential part of communication. In case of deaf, sign language is the natural means of communication and thus essential for their overall development. He firmly believes in the capabilities of deaf and believes that any hurdle can be overcome with a sound knowledge of a means of communication which in case of deaf is sign language.

VOLUNTEERISM

At NDS a strong emphasis is laid on volunteerism. We feel each individual has the potential to bring a change in the community. Employees from different companies have been volunteering with us as a part of their CSR activity. These volunteers take knowledge sessions on various topics that are significant for the deaf. Sessions by professional volunteers provides a good exposure to students as they get to interact with hearing people. Even though the sessions are interpreted they learn from a different perspective and understand more about the industry standards.

Barclays Shared Services has been associated with us for the last 3 years. Continuing with their volunteering activity at NDS, they covered various topics like Money Management, email etiquette, healthy habits, Disaster Management and self defense.

Barclays team also organized a visit to Science Museum for our primary education students who had a great time learning various science facts and seeing the practical experiments. They also organized a day’s painting com-petition for the students.

IN-HOUSE SESSIONS

NDS deals with deaf adolescents. It becomes critical for us to counsel the deaf students on a regular basis about issues and challenges pertaining to their daily lives. With the same objective, we held sessions on reproductive health, road safety and dengue. These sessions are taken throughout the year; individual counseling is being done almost every day where NDS deals with the students’ daily challenges.

8

Anuja Shukla, a Teach for India fellow did one and a half month of volunteering with us. She learnt sign language and worked on a presentation about cheque clearing process which proved to be really helpful for our students. Sharing her experience, she says,

“I will be leaving NDS on 13th June, but I am taking with me lots of memories, fun, learning, sharing with people here. Working with deaf society has been a turning point in life which has made me realize that I am gifted with a precious gift of hearing and speech. At last I want to say that in my opinion Deaf person also have dreams to grow, they are similar to us, they have ability to learn, write, talk, care, share just like a hearing person and we should try to help them fulfill their dream”. –Anuja Shukla

A unique session that took place this year was a HacKidemia Workshop. Ms. Stefania Druga visited NDS along with one of her associate Parveen to organize a workshop with our students on the application of basic principles of science in our lives.

EXPOSURE

Worlds of Wonder

About 50 students accompanied by their teachers went to World of Wonder (WoW) in Sector-18 Noida on 22nd August. The trip was sponsored by a support-er of NDS.

Founder’s Day

13th June is a special day for the students and staff of NDS. It marks the beginning of the NDS journey in 2005.

This day is celebrated with loads of passion and exu-berance by not only the Noida centre but the other outreach centres of Delhi, Jaipur and Hisar. To make this day even more fun-filled, students had prepared some dance performances and mime acts.

9

ANNUAL FELICITATION CEREMONY

On this day, the students of Noida Deaf Society were encouraged with words of praise by heads of dif-ferent institutions and received the graduating certificates in MS Office, Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design and Networking and Hardware courses by NIIT Foundation.

The event was host to a large gathering comprising of Deaf students, Donors, Supporters, NIIT Founda-tion and Senior Management from Corporates as well as the employment partners. Dr. Naresh Gupta Senior Vice President, Print and Publishing, and Managing Director, Adobe India was the chief guest.

The function was well attended by guests of honor Mr.Farhat Jamal, Area Manager & General Manager Shangri-La’s - Eros Hotel, Brigadier Rajiv Williams, Corporate Head – CSR, Jindal Stainless Limited, Mr. P. Rajendran, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Director, NIIT, Padma Shri Mr.B.S.Das– Chairman Fairwood Group, Mr. Pierre de Rancourt, Managing Director, COWI India (P) Ltd, Mr.Dheeraj Bhushan- Director of Human Resource- Shangri La’s Eros Hotel, NDS Board of Trustees and other distinguished guests.

Ruma Roka, Founder, took this opportunity to express gratitude towards all the supporters of NDS and share about the future vision. She, in her inspiring address said – “Every year I get overwhelmed with the number of new deaf youth that come for training. They come with great hope for jobs but really no skills. We have been putting our heart and soul in training them and know that they can be assets at the work-place. I hope more and more corporate will come forward and give the deaf youth a chance.”

The day was marked by some spectacular performances by our Deaf Students. NDS students presented a mime based upon the theme of national integration and communal harmony.

NDS also presented a short film showcasing dreams & aspirations of our students which received a huge applause from the audiences. A splendid dance performance on JAI HO by our deaf students was the special attraction of the day. It was heartening to see the experiences shared by NDS ex-students and currently NDS trainers Pankaj Kumar & Vikas Choudhary. The day ended with high tea & lunch for all the invitees.

10

CELEBRATIONS

Teacher’s day at NDS

Teacher’s day is one of the most awaited days at NDS. As this day we have multiple celebrations through which we try and express our heartfelt grat-itude and love to our teachers. Similar celebrations also took place in our outreach centres.

Holi celebrations at NDS

The student and staff of NDS celebrated Holi with enthusiasm and fun. The students and team played holi with colors.

SUCCESS STORIES

Pankaj Kumar Dutta, Customer Service Associ-ate, Food Street Pvt. Ltd.

Pankaj comes from a simple family in Bihar. After his father died, the household responsibilities were shifted on him and his mother. His mother took up a job as a clerk in BSF and moved to Delhi to sup-port herself and her only son. After completing his schooling, he came to NDS looking for a job. After much training, he was placed with Food Street Pvt. Ltd, for 8 months now and the feedback about him has been exceptional. His employers are very happy to have him on board and constantly praise him. They call him “guest maniac” in their own lingo.

Both NDS and his family are very proud of how far he has come.

Ankita Kalyan, Proof Reader, Sage Publications

Ankita was born deaf. Growing up with 2 siblings and parents who were hearing was not easy. Ankita often wondered what she did to deserve such a life. Her father was the only bread winner which put a lot of pressure on her because she was the oldest sibling. She came to NDS for help and divided her time between NDS and school.

Through NDS’s training program, she regained her confidence and further developed her skills. All her hard work paid off when she was offered a job in Sage Publication as a Proof Reader. She is very hap-py now as she is able to support her family financial-ly. Her family is very proud of her accomplishments and is grateful to NDS.

11

Individual DonorsAshish and Poonam Mittal, Bhavin Doshi, Brijbir Saran Das, James T O Hara and Kathleen, Kiran Kapoor,Kishori Lal Khosla, Late Mrs. Nirmala Das, M.N.Mallik and Mita Roy, O.P.Tandon, Payal Kapur Sharma, Rachhpal Singh, Rahul Prasanna Dave, Reena Nanda, Sonal Virmani, Usha Varadarajan, Vibhor Mittal

Trusts/FoundationAmerican India Foundation, Axis Bank Foundation, Caring Hand for ChildrenCharities AID Foundation India, Concern India Foundation, DEEDS Public Charitable Trust, Give2AsiaGulab Singh Kamal Mathur Memorial Trust, Inner Wheel, Lioness Club Delhi Metro, National TrustNIIT Foundation, Sohan Lal Charitable Trust, Tirath Ram Satya Devi Charitable Trust

Firms and CompanyAnil- Anokha Designs Inc, Barclays Shared Services, Mphasis Limited, Nangia and CompanyVintage Shades, Vision Retail

Donation in KindAshish Gujral-Super Overseas Private Limited, Barclays Shared Services, Chitra Prasad, Kaizer RokaPurnima Rai, Sohanlal Charitable Trust, Tehmina and Narender Yadav, T MerchandisingThe Lioness Club Noida, Soma

12

Noida Deaf Society

Head Office and Training Centre : C-4/194, Sector – 36 Noida (U.P)- 201303 Registered Office : 469, Sector – 29, Noida (U.P)- 201303

Training Centre 2 : I – 180, Prem Nagar II, 70ft Road, Kirari, New Delhi – 110086 Tel No: 0120-4245061, 9310640348

Email : info@noidadeafsociety.org; ruma_roka@hotmail.comWebsite: www.noidadeafsociety.org