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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This portal has been possible, thanks to the effort of many individuals who have helped us in various ways. One of the best parts of building this portal has been the many wonderful people we have met during our journey. We take this opportunity to sincerely thank all the volunteers and well-wishers for being a part of Nayi Disha in many different ways.

We would like to thank the students and faculty of the M.A.Education Program at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, for their assistance. . The students (1st and 2nd year of 2015 who opted for the elective course “Education of Children with Special Needs”) conducted the first round of surveys for inclusion at mainstream schools. We thank Dr. Sonia Sawhney for mentoring the students to conduct the surveys.

We would also like to thank Ms Afshan Jabeen (of Ripples Learning Centre) for helping us develop the content on developmental disabilities. We would like to thank Dr. Usha Naik and Dr. Kanakalatha for their guidance.

We are grateful to Mrs. Jayashree Ramesh of ASHA School, Bangalore, Ms. Vasanthalakshmi Pendlijeevi and Sumita Shastry of IRC, Bangalore, Ms Hima Bindu, Ms. Madhavi Adimulam, and Ms. Suruchi Bharagava for their guidance.. We also thank Ms. V. Sindhuma of Abhaya Care Foundation School for her guidance on various available schemes and for allowing us to use the school photographs.

We would also like to thank Rinny Naik of Crimson Chrome Hues for designing the Nayi Disha logo.

Our wonderful team of volunteers has travelled as far as 35 kms. to conduct the surveys. They have relentlessly contacted many special educators, therapists and doctors over the phone to encourage them to be a part of our listing.  Some have helped us with content development on schemes and information on various developmental disabilities. Some have helped us with the website development and  graphics. Thank you Ankita Agrawal, Archana Voleti, Bhooma Venkatdesan, Devashish Chandra, Jayashree Vasudevan, Juhi Choudhury, Kavita Pereira, Kripa Krishnan, Maitree Mishra, Parvathy Ramakrishnan, Rasika Venkataraman, Susmita Sinha, Sudheendra Herkal of IITM WebOps team, and Usha Ramachandran.

Our sincere thanks to Aneesha Sharma, Arun Pillai, and P.R. Ranjith for guiding us on various aspects of the website.

We are also indebted to  the parents, Mr. Anil Joshi, Deepa Garwa, Savithri Selvaraja and Rahul & Parul Vipparthi for providing us their valuable feedback and also helping us with the content for the website.