Project Description

The Ann Foundation kicked off 2006 with a mission trip to follow up on many of our earlier projects in India:

• In January we launched a computer workshop for visually impaired students in collaboration with Loyola College, in Chennai. Those who took part were able to learn more in a follow-up workshop later that year. Among the participants was an English professor who lost his vision at an early age.
• Dorothy Hephzibah, a polio survivor and director of the New Horizon Trust for the hearing and visually challenged youth in Bangalore, knows how much the gift of mobility can improve a person’s life. Hephzibah teamed up with the Ann Foundation, who provided the Trusts five hundred disabled young adults with free wheelchairs.
• The Ann Foundation helped provide new opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing children at the Sheila Kothavala Institute for the Deaf, in Bangalore, by helping set up a new computer learning center. The AF organized local volunteers to train teachers and students, and donated computers, computer furniture and hearing aids to the Institute.
• Children from Rochester, N.Y., raised money to buy uniforms for 120 children at Mercy Home orphanage in Bangalore. The AF also provided software, vitamins, oral care products and school supplies. Our own board member, Ann Parsons, conducted a workshop for the visually challenged students at Mercy Home.
• Ernakulam Social Services Society in Cochin, India, collaborated with the Ann Foundation to provide workshops for the teachers of hearing and visually impaired children. The AF also donated three software packages and computers, and the students at the Jyothi Seva School for Blind Children in Bangalore benefited greatly from their new software and Braille printers.