Stories of Change

Opportunities for people with disabilities are slim in a city like Kolkata, where a third of the population live in slum communities and migrant workers flood the city looking for work. Sandipan Adhikari however, hasn’t had to worry about how to provide for himself or his family despite being born deaf and living in urban Kolkata.

Since 1992 when he studied a fully paid for art course at Jadavpur University, he has been providing for himself, and now for his wife and nine year old son. The course he studied in 1992, funded by Trade Aid partner Silence and available to artisans with a range of physical disabilities, gave him full employment on graduation. Now Sandipan talks about enjoying teaching his son to draw too. He acknowledges “there would be no opportunity for me to draw if it was not for Silence.”

From this employment Sandipan receives dignity and respect, a good wage and a share in the organisation’s profits. He is surrounded by artisans who, like himself, are also disabled and are growing in number every year as Silence successfully breaks into the domestic market with its high quality candles and incense products. Sandipan is happy at Silence and says “I like my work because I like to draw and because everyone around me is a friend.”

Trade Aid education tour participants met and talked with Sandipan in 2009.