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Announcements :o)

Maitri, our remedial class educator delivered a healthy baby girl weighing 3 kgs. Both mom and baby are fine.

Payal, our communication therapist delivered a healthy baby boy in January 2007. Both are well.

Nikita, our special educator delivered a baby girl in February 2007. They too are doing well.

Bharat, our administrative assistant cleared his second term exam with a first class.

Rajnish, the project coordinator at Setu has almost completed his Diploma in Health and Financial Management from the Ahmedabad Management Association.

Updated on 17.03.2008

Early Intervention Unit- Core Team

Mr. Rajnishkumar Sinha, Project Coordinator and Senior Occupational Therapist, looks after day to day management of the programmes at Setu, coordinates with medical professionals and attends to assessments, planning, implementation and evaluation of neurodevelopmental training, fine motor training and sensory integration training. He also counsels parents on the therapeutic aspects of rehabilitation, trains rehabilitation students and supervises interns from a local para-medical college.

Mrs. Nikita Pandya, Special Educator, with a Diploma in Special Education looks after assessments, planning, implementation and evaluation of special education training, behaviour modification and development of social skills. Nikita is on maternity leave at the moment.

Mrs. Payal Trivedi, Communication Therapist, with a Diploma in Special Education, looks after implementation, follow up and alteration of communication training activities under the supervision of Mrs. Madhvi Dhru, our senior consultant Speech Therapist and Chairperson. She also carries out assessment services for children with hearing impairment and trains rehabilitation students. Payal is on maternity leave at the moment.

Remedial Education Unit - Core Team

Mrs. Meena Bhatt, Remedial Unit Coordinator, is also a Member Trustee of Setu Developmental Intervention Centre. She is a trained educator and the mother of a child with disabilities. She looks after overall planning, implementation, follow up and alteration of remedial education activities. Meena also coordinates with the entire team and the parent counselor to ensure smooth functioning of the organization.

Mrs. Rashmi Makwana, Remedial Educator, is a special educator with a B. Ed. and she looks after the activities of the remedial class and community programme children under the able guidance of Mrs. Meena Bhatt.

Mrs. Maitri Modi, Remedial Educator, is a trained Special Educator. She has earlier worked with school going children with special needs for over a year. She coordinates planning, implementation, follow up and alteration of remedial education activities with Mrs. Meena Bhatt.  

Mrs. Rajashree, Assistant Educator, looks after the community programme children and the remedial class children in the afternoon batch. She is undergoing training under Mrs. Rashmi Makwana and assists her in the activities of both programmes.

Mr. Bhadresh, Fund Raising Officer, will eventually look after networking and fundraising activities of the organization. He is a recent addition and is undergoing training under Mrs. Meena Bhatt and Mr. Rajnish Sinha at the moment.

Mrs. Vinita Kanhare, Parent Counselor, works with mothers of children coming to the centre in group as well as individual settings on a part time basis and assists them in dealing with their concerns, difficulties in social life and works with them to develop positive attitudes about self and the child. She also works with them to plan home programmes in self help and behaviour domains.

National/ International Volunteers/ Interns till date- arranged alphabetically

Ms. Abha Mistry, from the Columbia University in New York is pursuing a masters in International Education Development, with a particular focus on special education: curriculum and teaching. She plans to write a research project on the topic of education of children with disabilities, including children who are raised in poverty who may not have access to related services. Abha was with us from June 2006 for three months.

Mr. Adam Szymanski, MBA (Marketing and Management), University of Wroclaw, Poland spent one year with the organization from November 2004 to October 2005, setting up accountancy systems, creating a database, looking after finances, marketing and daily administrative jobs as well as developing modules for HR training. He also worked on the research study.

Ms. Anna Heese, finished a Diploma in Psychology (equivalent to a Graduate degree) from Regensburg University in Germany and spent between 12 to 15 weeks from June 2006 working on behaviour modification and in the Centre for Autism. She also conducted HR activities and helped us code the data for the research study.

Ms. Maeve O'Leary Barrett, a graduate in Psychology from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom came to the centre to reevaluate and design a new curriculum for the programme for children with profound and severe degree of autism. She was with us from January 16 to April 30, 2007.

Natalie Boecher, whose internship with Setu was cancelled due to the riots in 2002 kept her promise to volunteer with us and arrived in the month of June 2004 while on a personal trip to India. She came for 3-4 weeks and eventually stayed on for 6! Nalli, as everyone calls her, helped us design the curriculum for cognitive and language development.

Ms. Poornima Devanahalli, from School of Social Work, St. Louis University, USA spent nearly 12 weeks with the organization from August 2005 working in coordination with Ms. Ami Pathak to develop a questionnaire on the impact of early intervention and field test it within the parent group of children attending the early intervention unit.

Mr. Rishi Doshi, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, USA spent 6 months working on developing a culture specific screening tool for pre-school children with Autism and field testing it an urban setup. He worked with various organizations across India and interacted intensively with us during his time in India.

Tabita Kurien, National Institute of Design (NID) , Ahmedbad, spent 3 months working on developing a sensory integration learning kit, she fondly named " Tink Tank" for the children in the centre as part of her graduate study internship.

Zuzana Neradova, from Czech Republic is a Psychology student with a keen interest in management aspects of running an organization. She spent three months with us from August 2007, assisting the team in therapeutic intervention, updating the database and working with Bharat on maintaining daily accounts.

Administration and Housekeeping

Bharat Desai works after school hours and helps us in administrative work.

Prabhu is our House Keeping person. He looks after the cleaning of the Centre premises.