About us
Arushi is a Bhopal-based NGO working for people with disabilities and the issues related to them. The basic objective of Arushi's work is to generate opportunities and develop capacities in people with disabilities so as to empower them to be able to make their own life choices and live a better life. Arushi also seeks to create, within the community, awareness about disabilities.
Although work in this direction had commenced much earlier, Arushi was formally set up in 1992. It began in a very small way with a few people reading and writing study material and tests for visually challenged students. As the enormity of the task unfolded with more and more such requirements, the appalling lack of such initiatives motivated the founder members to increase their scope and range of activities.
Disadvantaged groups become susceptible to blatant and some subtle forms of oppression, exploitation, abuse and marginalization. Arushi strives to generate more opportunities for these people and develop capabilities in them to assess their choices and make informed decisions.
Impairment may be physical, functional or mental, but disabling conditions are structural, (poverty, inequality of income, lack of affordability of services) systemic (physical barriers, restriction of access, ignorance, lack of information) or induced by societal norms (neglect, overprotection, sympathetic attitudes). Disabling conditions exist universally and their degree and intensity is situation specific. This implies that to make an appreciable impact, the interventions have to be need-based. With this strategy in mind, Arushi is committed to work with the 'differently abled'.
Arushi advocates the rights and concerns of persons with disabilities through sensitization of society, government, corporate and civics bodies towards the needs and problems of the disabled and strives to orient them to adopt a modern and scientific view of the role of disabled vis a vis their rights in the society.
