Project Prakash Charitable Trust
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Mission Statement
Transform the lives of individuals with various disabilities by providing treatment, helping their socio-economic and educational rehabilitation and undertaking scientific research to understand causes and develop better therapies
About This Cause
India shoulders the greatest burden of the planet’s 1.3 million blind children in developing countries. Most children stay untreated due to scant medical facilities and the belief that beyond the first few years, interventions are futile. This lack of treatment has devastating consequences. Over 90% of the affected children are unable to obtain an education and fewer than 50% survive to adulthood. More than 80% are unemployed as adults. For blind girls, the outlook is even more dire. 75% of girls with disabilities suffer physical or sexual abuse. Project Prakash is an Indo-US effort involving the coming together of a passionate group of researchers and clinicians from MIT, Dr Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital, New Delhi and IIT Delhi that has been working since 2005 at the very grassroots of India, in hundreds of villages. True to its name, Project Prakash seeks to bring light into the lives of congenitally blind children and simultaneously illuminate several foundational questions regarding brain function. The Prakash effort involves four key steps - 1. Outreach: The health professionals of Project Prakash conduct ophthalmic outreach in remote villages in India to identify children whose blindness can be treated. 2. Treatment: All such children are provided world-class treatment entirely free of cost at our partner hospitals. 3. Rehabilitation: Once these children are successfully treated, Project Prakash helps these children constructively use their improved vision so that they can live independent, productive lives. The Prakash team provides counseling and financial support to these students. Additionally, through partnerships with premier organisations, opportunities to study and learn vocational skills are offered to them. 4. Research: Embedded in the humanitarian aspect of Project Prakash is an unprecedented opportunity to study one of the deepest scientific questions: How does the brain learn to extract meaning from sensory information? The humanitarian initiatives of Project Prakash are beginning to create a remarkable population of children across a wide age-range who are just setting out on the enterprise of learning how to see. The Prakash researchers have begun following the development of visual skills in these unique children to gain insights into fundamental questions regarding object learning and brain plasticity. This is a unique and unprecedented window into some of the most fundamental mysteries of how the brain learns to organize its sensorium. To date, Project Prakash has screened over 60,000 children, provided non-surgical care to 2,000 and surgically treated over 500 children. Some of our children, after gaining sight and being provided relevant rehabilitation and counselling opportunities, have gone on to live independently either working in government jobs or pursuing their education. The Project Prakash team has also won several awards and our work has been featured in distinguished journals like the New York Times, TIME magazine, Times of India etc. The scientific insights from Project Prakash have made their way into leading scientific journals like Nature and Science and have generated awareness and helped us advocate for treatment of congenital blindness irrespective of age. Here is a recent news article about some work that was published in the journal Science. Project Prakash is a registered non-profit in India and in the USA.