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Its been 6 months to this enriching journey to live on an Aash, while ourselves being a source of Aash to the 94 children and their families we have touched.
We started out on 1st April 2019 from a 2 room space in the basement of a loving Sood Family house, we were a team of 4 and saw 2 children on the first day.
As of 30th September 2019, we have our center in a spacious 9 room space Blue House centrally located in Kullu town, with a public garden in front, are a team of 9 and saw 42 children on 30th September.
I was lucky, to say the least, and could make the right choices early on in life and found what I loved to do. In 2011 while on a cycling expedition from Kullu to Leh I came across an amazing organization called Handimachal that worked with children with disabilities. I was inspired to say the least by the vision and work it did. The month-long trip in the mountains had a profound life-altering experience on me. My plans to move to the US were replaced by moving to Kullu to work with children with disabilities. Know more here about Rekha's and My journey at Handimachal here: https://newzhook.com/story/15239
7 years of the humbling, inspiring and exhilarating journey came to halt on 30th March 2019 when Rekha Thakur and I resigned from the organization due to the change of vision we had for the work we did and wanted to do in the future. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone and it was devastating. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that having fallen out with the organization was the best thing to have happened to us. We still loved what we did and the turn of events at the previous organization had not changed that one bit. So we started over!!!
We set up the Samphia Foundation to offer people with disabilities and their families more support, opportunity, and choice. The ultimate goal of which being inclusion. Aash Child Development being our 1st step towards Inclusion.
We returned to the Blue House from where Rehka in 2014 and I in 2012 had started our journeys in the field of Disability, as Founders of Samphia Foundation this time with larger vision for Inclusion having learned our lessons well and not employees appointed to fallow blindly what is been told to do.
Cliche as it may sounds, it's true! In the words of Steve Jobs,
"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust that something your gut, karma, god, nature, destiny whatever, because believing that the dots will connect will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even if it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the differences.
Some times life is going to hit you in the head with a brick, don't lose faith. The only thing that kept us going was that we loved what we did, You got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to Love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't Settle!
Your time is limited so don't waste it living someones else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown your own inner voice. And most importantly have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, somehow they already know what you truly want to be."
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