Award to honour differently-abled

Five remarkable achievers from across the county were applauded in a grand event held recently amidst the presence of several eminent personalities, celebrities and successful social entrepreneurs. The awards aim to change mind-sets of the public towards persons with disabilities and applaud exceptional achievers from across the country — individuals who have triumphed over colossal barriers in pursuit of their dreams. 

CavinKare Ability Awards are jointly conceived and conducted by CavinKare and Ability Foundation, a national NGO for the empowerment of persons with disabilities. This year the winners included Divyanshu Ganatra, a Pune-based clinical psychologist, corporate trainer, educationist and researcher as well as first blind person in country to do solo-paragliding; K Murugasamy from TN, founder of Tirupur District Sports Association for the Deaf; Sai Kaustuv Dasgupta from Andhra Pradesh, a young man with osteogenesis imperfecta and the resultant brittle bones who is a motivational speaker and the author of My Life, My Love, My Dear; K Suguna from TN, a visually-impaired gutsy woman with a ready smile and positive outlook, who has been lighting up the lives of young students; Haryana-based Pooja Gupta, who despite the plethora of challenges brought forth by ataxia, became the first in her college to clear the National Eligibility Test (NET) and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) test and Jaskaran Singh from Bengaluru, a quadriplegic, who made it to the prestigious IIM-Bangalore with a CAT score of 99 percentile, rising like a phoenix after a devastating car crash in 2012. 

The nomination process starts as early as four months prior to the event. They are screened and shortlisted, based on their difficulty levels, triumph over adversity and uniqueness of the task accomplished by a jury panel that includes nationally acclaimed persons from all walks of lives to scrutinise the films of the shortlisted nominees and regional representative’s reports and then select the recipients. 

This time, the jury comprised Dr. Mariazeena Johnson, Harish Lakshman, Alarmel Valli, PN Vasudevan, Dr. Priya Selvaraj and Aishwaryaa R Dhanush. 

Jayshree Raveendran, Founder & Honorary Executive Director, Ability Foundation, said, “Changing mindsets, dispelling stereotypes, focussing on the potential and spearheading change in attitudes towards persons with disabilities; these have always been our target, right from the time we initiated the awards. And today, as we put forward our 15th edition, a sense of blissful attainment fills my heart. The work and the lives of our recipients speak for themselves.”