Institutions

Manav Seva Sannidhi

Her name is Abhilasha. She truly symbolizes hope and aspiration by bringing cheer and the will to live in desolate lives filled with anguish and despair. Trained as a lawyer, Abhilasha Singhvi, made compassion her life’s calling. Founder and Executive Trustee of Manav Seva Sannidhi (MSS), whose objective is the alleviation of human misery and suffering, Abhilasha has, over 19 years focused on one area of human suffering: Disabilities in the form of loss or absence of limbs.

Starting in a small way in rural backdrop of the south has now expanded countrywide to embrace the poorest of the poor who may have lost their limbs due to deformity, accident, disease, injury or congenital defect etc.

If provides artificial limbs, including the famous Jaipur Foot, and calipers free of cost to all patients, besides giving them free boarding and lodging facilities until they are able to walk home without crutches.

“The emphasis is not merely on providing artifices limbs but on renewing the lost sense of dignity and self-confidence of the individual. When everything is lost and life seems like a bleak and dreary tunnel, it is about providing a spark of light,” Abhilasha says with a captivating smile.

This emotional bonding is obvious from the fact that MSS today is the only such camp in India where older patients come back as volunteers to inspire newer patients. “The motivation for my work is my need to channelise my own pain. My life has been flooded with love of all my patients,” she says.” I consider myself fortunate that I have been blessed with his divine grace and given an opportunity to reduce someone’s pain. I now have an extended family of more than 13,000 beneficiaries.”

MSS organizes camps all over India, and has many success stories. “Jhinabhai, on his way to commit suicide after an amputation, is now my best Garba dancer. Dilip, born without legs, came to me at the age of 6 and is now 24, and has completed his computer engineering,” Abhilasha says.

MSS also organized a camp for life convicts in Sabarmati Jail, in its Ahmedabad camp. In its recently concluded interactive school sessions in the Capital, after a series in Mumbai, MSS undertook the task of sensitizing students to the pain of others and to empathies with that pain.

Source: NGO brings hope in life of the disabled, The Tribune, Daily, New Delhi, 19 Oct 2006