About Sama Foundation
(Sama is a kannada word which means "Equal")
Sama Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to stop discrimination in the name of disability and start inclusion in the name of humanity. Ramanathan was working at EveryChild-UK, EveryChild-UK was mainly focusing on street children, child labour and trafficking children in India. EveryChild showed its interest to work among children with disabilities the most marginalized in the society through Inclusive Development Approach and Mr.G.Ramappa, Country Director of Everychild-UK was a key person for starting Sama Foundation. Ramanathan and group of young people with disability came forward to start Sama on 28th December 2005.
Just 1% got education among disability community, according to National Sample Survey Organization (1991), Hence the employment is very less among disability community. Disabled people will not get even manual job which doesn't require education due to stigma in the society (How can you take such a hard work from a weak disabled person). This situation force disabled people to depend on the family for their daily needs. After several round of discussion we decided to focus on Education and Livelihood which will create an access to source of income to lead a dignified life. Since our approach is community based, we also started working for the inclusive development of the community like imparting employable skills to under privileged youths in the slums. Recently the whole sama team and volunteers worked very hard to address health, food and livelihood needs of the community who are affected by Pandemic.
