Crowd-funding can be an effective tool to help the disabled

MUMBAI: Eight-year-old Yash Chaudhri from Mumbai was one among the many disabled waiting for an extension to their unstable foot, before crowdfunding helped him with prosthetic limbs.

There are scores of children born with disability who can ill-afford to get themselves treated. And that's where crowd funding provides a ray of hope to them and parents, assisted by NGOs.

Rajiv Mehta, trustee of NGO Ratna Nidhi, which helped Yash's family said, "He (Yash) was very confident about his abilities. He got engrossed in books, thought he was just like anybody else and did not want anybody to pity him for his condition. That's how all people with disabilities are."

He says that disabled people need society's understanding and support, not pity.

Mehta's NGO has received grants to develop 3D scanning software to scan residual limbs and print proper-fitting sockets for people in rural areas.

Conservative estimates of the World Bank and World Health Organization suggest that there are about 70-100 million individuals with a disability in India.

One person gets disabled in India every minute. It is for these mobility camps that crowd funding is needed to help as many people as possible. This can become a strong tool to help the nation's 70 million disabled persons, Mehta said.

As per a report by Save LIFE Foundation, five million people were seriously injured or disabled in road accidents in India in the past decade, that is about one person per minute.