Activities

Knowledge is Power. Madonna is designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments and does impart regular literary and academic classes to our pupils. To keep pace with modern world, they are given training to use laptop computers. The achievement of the pupils in this field is, we are very happy to note, very encouraging. (photos)

Madonna School is a Day Care Centre cum Residential Home. Day Care includes a range of organised programmes addressing habilitative (pre-primary), academic (primary), secondary, pre-vocational, vocational preparation, adult educational and competitive or assisted employment. There are good many pupils who have passed the IVth form exam, VIIth form exam and Xth form exam (secondary school) conducted by Kerala State Government.

The working time -10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Madonna doesn’t work on Saturdays and on public holidays notified by the Government.

The School Assembly starts with a prayer, a swearing in, drills, announcements by the Principal and a concluding hymn. This is followed by the Staff’s special prayer and the Principal’s guidelines for the teachers, if there is any. (photos)

Service to Humanity is Service to God. Madonna provides special education and training for the intellectually disabled children. Intellectual disability (formerly known as Mental Retardation) is characterized by significant impairment in cognitive and adaptive behaviour. Besides developing in our children the basic functions and social skills by using up-to-date scientific techniques, Madonna does give them vocational training in simple jobs suited to their varying degrees of function level.

With a view to give them direct community experience we frequently take our children out for field trips in and outside the state. New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Ootty, Veilankanni etcetera are familiar sites for our children.

We keep up the important national days with several items by our children inviting their parents/guardians and the public. This helps to create in our children self-confidence leading to self-esteem. (photos)

“Family is the First School of Love,” wrote Pope Saint John Paul II. Due to a prayerful entry into the world of the mentally impaired, we have come to the glaring fact that there are several mentally challenged children residing in far away villages without any transportation convenience at all. We constructed a residential home for them. Now there are 40 children in our Madonna Residential Home. The inmates of our Residential Home do make rapid development. Madonna Residential Home tries her best to be a real family, the first school of love, for our differently abled children. And it works. (photos)

The Catholic Students among the inmates participate in the morning prayer and the Holy Mass. Many of them receive Jesus in the Holy Communion.

Parents especially the mothers of the intellectually disabled children, being the primary caregivers for their children suffer more psychological distress than other members in their families. The mothers of the mentally retarded children bear the burden and stress of upbringing an underprivileged child. Since the day-to-day love and affection from the parents/guardians, siblings is the primary factor for development of mentally retarded children, we contact the parents/guardians of our children once in a week. We talk to them at large about the role of the family for a better improvement of a mentally retarded person.

Four to five seminars are organized in an academic year for a better awareness of the parents of these children. Three or four PTA meetings are held every academic year and they discuss the overall performance of the children. (Video)

“A Dream Come True” - this is how Sr. Rubina described about the Madonna Therapy Centre. The Mentally deficient have terrible speech disorder and difficulty in motor movement. We believe that unless these defects are rectified, our ceasless efforts for their sustained development become futile. Therefore, we have, by God’s abundant blessings, managed to construct at the premises of Madonna a physio-therapy and speech therapy centre with dazzling facilities. (video)(photos) .

“The sick need the physician,” Jesus the divine physician said. Due to the generosity of the medical practitioners of Chalakudy Dental Association, we started a dental clinic wherein our pupils receive free dental service. It’s an asset to our centre for a good many of our pupils have dental complaint. Our children, who are otherwise unwilling to visit a dental doctor, volunteers to visit the dental clinic assisted by their teachers. They feel at home.

In the premises of Madonna Special School a Sensorial Park is under construction. It will help, we believe, for an effective communication of skills, motor skills, social skills etcetera to our beloved but unfortunate children. (photos)

In the premises of Madonna Residential Home, there is a beautiful park with a good number of play equipments, flower plots, and running tracks. Our children spend their evenings in this park enjoying the beauty of nature while refreshing themselves. (photos)

Music is the Language of the Heart. We have a band set of 19 players whose performance equals to that of normal children. It has a lot of demand at the public functions in and outside our Muncipal area. (photos)

Madonna children are very good at performing art like dance, which has aesthetic and symbolic value. As somebody noticed, our children could be good at both theatrical and participatory dances.

We are proud to place on record that a good number of our pupils have excelled at International Special Olympics and have been to New Carolina, USA and in national Speical Olympics at New Delhi, Punjab, Chattisgargh, Hariyana, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chennai and Gujarath. Our children is not behind anybody or anything. What they need is a hand to hold to be led forward into a new world of wonder and fulfillment. (photos)

Work is Worship. Work is essential for every human being not only for economic independence but also for the attainment of self-esteem and self dignity leading to an abiding joy in life. For persons with disability, it is still more important as the self-esteem and financial gain generated out of it offset to a great extent the negative impact of society’s disdainful attitude towards them. Therefore we do give our pupils vocational training in simple jobs suited to their function level. They make paper tags, paper bags, carry bags, flowers, bouquets, candles, envelops, pen holders, greeting cards, glass painting, mufflers, garments, children’s attire, soap powder etcetera. (video)

Madonna children are good at gardening and farming, especially looking after the paddy fields. For Madonna development is living with the nature, not building artificial concrete jungles! (photos)

Madonna children grow tapioca, a woody shrub, of which the roots are used as food. Some days of their noon meal include these products. (Video)

Madonna children are good at animal husbandry which includes raising of cows and goats for milk. After their domestic use, the balance milk, 100% pure, is sold to 42 families around the Residential Home and thus earn some money. (Video)

They look after poultry where there are chicken, varieties of duck and other domesticated birds. (Video)

Madonna has four ponds, stocked with fish and used in acquaculture for fish farming. This helps them to have partly self-sufficient community. (Video)

Our aspiration is to develop our children into the earning members of their families. We don’t want them to wander about when their parents/caretakers are no more, for a mentally deficient person isn’t generally accepted in his/her family. The final target of Madonna is to mould our unfortunate children to be useful and productive citizens of our nation to the extent possible so that in future they may not be a burden to their families and a curse to the society. Hence vocational training is a top priority of Madonna.

Due to the multi-faceted activities mentioned above, our special education and training become in effect an integrated education or rather equal to present day inclusive education. Some of our former students are regular workers in some reputed firms. To cite some examples: Sanias, our former student, work as a watchman at D Cinemas, Chalakudy; Christo works in an Aluminium Fabrication firm; Benoy works as a painter; Rupesh works at Apollo Tyre factory; and Sony at a Glass Factory…

“Prayer is the very mystery that takes us into the bosom of God,” said Rev. Dr. Jose Maniparambil. There is a prayer room in our School, which can be used by a person of any faith. Besides this, there is a prayer hall for Christian children at the Madonna Residential Home. (photos)

Madonna has varied plans and schemes for ensuring a healthier and happier world for these least privileged brethren of our society. Now Madonna is knocking at the doors of the blessed and fortunate ones to come forward and support us in this noble cause.

With your abiding support we can start….

* Sheltered workshop * agricultural farm * cultivation of medicinal plants * Parents’ Couselling Centre * Group Homes serving from a handful to 10- 15 people each * Awareness Campaigns * Special Education Kits * Auditorium * Mobile Special Education Clinics * Water Therapy Unit * Research Centre * Special Teachers’ Training Institute….

Let’s toil hand-in-hand with one mind and heart for brightening the dark horizon of our dearest mentally challenged brethren.