Devendra Dengle works in the Gokhalenagar workshop and stitches dusters for industrial use. He is excellent at his job. He plays cricket very well and also is a good singer. The achievement that stands above all is the Silver medal in Roller Skating that he won at Special Olympics 2015. This has merited him a scholarship of Rs 4 lakhs from the PM’s special scheme. Expenses for his US trip were met through donations raised by Kamayani.
Devendra comes from a very modest background. He lost his father at an early age and was raised by his mother, who used to work as a household help to look after her three children.
Today Devendra works in the evenings as a Skating instructor at the Kamayani Skating Rink.
Sanjana Thorat now works in the Nigdi workshop and makes paper envelopes. But she has many other talents. She likes to sing and dance. She is very good at drawing and has won several prizes in drawing competitions. She has been playing floor hockey and has also competed in athletic events in Shot Put.
No wonder her parents are happy with her progress over the last 10 years in Kamayani. She does all the household work independently.
Madhumati Indulkar has been learning Bharatanatyam, a form of classical dance, for many years and has a number of stage performances to her credit. She is a case of Downs Syndrome.
These students show that they have different abilities. Howard Gardner first proposed that there are different types of intelligences and cognitive intelligence that helps us think and choose on the basis of logic using language and numbers is only one of the intelligences. This kind of intelligence is present to a very limited extent in persons with intellectual disability. But they have other types of intelligence.
Like Musical intelligence in the case of Sanjana or Kinesthetic intelligence in the case of Devendra and Madhumati.
There are other forms such as Social and Naturalistic intelligence as well.
Our schools and workshops make every effort to provide opportunities to students to develop their particular talent and develop in that direction.