It’s a brief explanation of why we decided name “Peelu” for our Organization. This name has been taken from Hazrat Khawaja Ghulam Farid’s poetry. In his poetry he mostly metaphorically & symbolically represented love for Allah, humanity, harmony and peace. It is depicted in his following kalam.
Its quite strenuous and laborious to harvest it. So it requires collaborative effort, harmony & alliance of group of people to harvest this fruit. We metaphorize this Peelu fruit with our Dream Children who requires collective support of community to make them the productive members of the society.
Children with disabilities are one of the most marginalized and excluded groups in society. Facing daily discrimination in the form of negative attitudes, they have hardly any access to healthcare, education, and even survival, as they are often among the poorest members of the population. In Pakistan, there are as many as 27 million people with disabilities, as per a report conducted by British Council in 2014 out of which only 14% are employed. The ratio of trained psychologists and other relevant therapists is 1 to 230.000 people.
Regarding this situation, we have taken a local initiative, in Multan (South Punjab) where the condition is worse in the perspective of disability, due to lack of awareness and literacy. We have launched a non-profit project to provide trained psychologists and other intervention therapists to work with underprivileged children with special needs. We work on all types of Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Downs Syndrome.
The idea was inspired by our Ambassador, a family member born with Partial Cerebral Palsy, and the difficulty of finding a proper center for special education and therapies in Multan. Dream Children was started in 2016 and registered under the name of Peelu Organization. We started with only six children and rose up to forty children with the increase of awareness. Some of our students have become independent and developed enough to start a normal life and join mainstream schools. In the course of this time, we have had a total of 40 children admissions, and 60 files in the waiting list.
We have been providing various interventions including Speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, Picture exchange communication system, Individualized Education plan and applied behavioral therapies in group and individual sessions. We believe these children can show positively productive results, if given the right attention and interventions at the right time.