With funds from the members of the Coimbatore Circle Round Table 31, corporate houses, and a few kind Samaritans, a Vocational Training Centre (VTC) for the hearing and speech impaired was established in 1982. This centre provides hearing and speech impaired adults with hands-on training to use various machinery. It is situated in the Corporation School for the Deaf campus at R.S. Puram.

“We have professionals who visit the centre and train the hearing and speech impaired persons. The idea of this vocational centre is to make them confident so that they can find employment in industries,” Parmasivam R. of VTC, says.

Till date this centre has trained thousands of individuals who are hearing and speech impaired. A majority of such individuals have found themselves a job in various industries that are located in and around Coimbatore.

Also located on the same school campus is a centre that runs various programmes for the hearing and speech impaired children. The In Enlightening the Disabled Centre (IED) is also one of the on-going long term projects of Coimbatore Circle Round Table 31 and it offers various programmes to train the logical and reasoning abilities of the hearing and speech impaired children.

“This centre has employed professionals who train the children to use the abacus to count. At this centre we also engage the children in various other physical activities,” Parmasivam says. Children are accompanied by their parents and the parents too are trained on how to help their children cope with routine activities.

Vocational Training Centre (VTC) and In Enlightening the Disabled centre (IED) accept donations in cash and kind