Blog

Sudha Nair, a special educator and passionate activist from Pune, was struck by the potential of Social Role Valorization back in 2018. She recently attended the four-date deep dive at SRV 3.0 and has put her sharp mind to the task of trying to relate Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) to a meaningful planning process for competency enhancement. She first explored the difference between a document intended to be a roadmap to accomplish goals and a living process that frames a roadmap for a person.

One of the areas in which Social Role Valorization sharpens our eyes is noticing the power that language has to convey negative or positive messages about people. Dr. Raheemuddhin Pk, psychologist and leader at CDMRP within the University of Calicut, attended a four-day intensive SRV workshop and immediately realized that in the many training courses he teaches to professionals, the language was highly medical in nature.

The Ashish Center, under the founder Geeta Mondol and the current Director, Sheila George, has taken the implementation of both person centered practice and Social Role Valorization forward in a steady arc with one strong strategy after another. Over time, we will cover several of these strategies in more detail, but for this Glimpse, we’ll look  at just one. It should be said that Ashish was an early adopter. Their leader attended the  inaugural SRV workshop, senior staff have attended, and families and board members have all been exposed to the ideas.

Prayatna is a small organization in Pune, Maharashtra, dedicated to supporting adults and children with developmental disability. Founding partners Radiya Gohil and Mridula Das attended the inaugural Social Role Valorization course  in 2016 in Delhi, and were struck with the concept of assisting people who have been often over-controlled and over-protected to maximize their personal autonomy and be “in the driver’s seat” of their lives.