Soulfree - Programs Under Development

Soulfree is a transparent Public Charitable Trust established in 2013 at Tiruvannamalai by Ms. Preethi Srinivasan, a quadriplegic to alleviate the suffering of others in her condition and ensure that they lead a life of dignity and purpose through improved opportunities in rehabilitation, education, employment, entrepreneurship, sports, and social reintegration.
At the Soulfree INSPIRE Centre, India’s first integrated spinal rehabilitation centre, the goal is to optimise self-reliance from a physiological, psychological, and socio-economic perspective for persons facing a lifetime of paralysis after spinal cord injury.
This goal is achieved through an individualised and holistic treatment program that is based on an experiential framework for integrated rehabilitation and reintegration into mainstream society.

The Challenge Statement

The only way for persons with spinal cord injury and other significant impairments that cause permanent disabilities to regain their sense of agency and dignity, is for them to become financially independent. For this, they must receive skill-building and life skills training, to ensure employment and entrepreneurship. This is the only way their voice will be heard, and they can become reintegrated into mainstream society.

Soulfree’s Solution

Soulfree aims to set up the following facilities in future.

SoulVoice

SoulVoice aims to provide opportunities in employment and entrepreneurship to quadriplegics or anybody with hand and/or finger impairment who are unable to find dignified work, so that they may use their voices to fulfil their highest potential.

The SoulVoice Learning Institute will develop skills with a special focus on voice-based, home-based jobs for those with hand and finger impairments. This training will be provided to PwSCI as well as others with conditions that impede regular employment options. SoulVoice will also serve as an equal opportunity employment centre by incorporating the facilities by undertaking applicable professions or PwSCI.

Currently the Soulfree INSPIRE Centre provides training programs such as tailoring, crochet making, and soap making. In future, additional training options would be included.

Training Options

Based on the level of education and interest, we can offer many courses like

Tailoring, crochet making

Cell phone repair and recharge – online services like payments

Voice-based jobs (call centre operators, BPOs, Radio Jockey etc)

Salon styling

Making Soaps

Running a kiosk

IT – Tally, Microsoft Office, tailor-made training for specific home-based job opportunities

Business development and management training

All will get life skills, soft skills, leadership, spoken English, financial management, using of smart phones for day-to-day activities as well as running their businesses.

Impact

Ideally, wheelchair users and persons with disabilities, who are deemed to be liabilities in society will become productive and respectable members of society.
From the perspective of measurable outcomes, our goal would be to ensure that within 6 months after completion of their training, they are engaged in some type of gainful endeavour that is stable and sustainable to a degree that they are able to take care of themselves and their families.

How Is Soulfree Qualified to Take On This Project

Soulfree has spent the last decade working on ways to improve the quality of life of persons with spinal cord injury (PwSCI). Soulfree has an exhaustive database of PwSCI and is also connected with other NGOs working in this area. Presently, Soulfree offers some vocational training facilities for its residents and co-residents at Soulfree’s INSPIRE Centre (computer, soap and detergent making and tailoring training). Therefore, establishing a separate learning institute, is a process of natural growth. Besides, it will enable Soulfree’s endeavours to be even more effective.

Persons with physical impairments, with appropriate support and counselling, are usually doubly motivated to prove themselves and with grit and determination can and will find a way to not just survive in this world, but thrive. The only thing they need is a fighting chance which the SoulVoice Learning Institute can make them ready for.

Please join hands with Soulfree to provide them with the fighting chance they deserve, so that they may live with dignity and purpose.

SoulCare

Soulfree recognizes the need for competent and sustained caregivers for persons with significant impairments like spinal cord injury that cause chronic immobility and consequently require long-term care. While the affluent reach out to commercial agencies that provide expensive nursing care, for the economically weaker sections, the burden of such care is placed on the family. Moreover, such caregivers are either unqualified (i.e. no proper training) or over qualified (e.g. those who have undergone Nursing Training).

Persons with spinal cord injury need very specific care; however, there is a tremendous dearth of trained caregivers in India. The other challenge is monetary compensation. After a life altering incident such as a spinal cord injury, the entire family faces tremendous financial burden in terms of hospitalisation, medical expenses as well as emotional trauma. Many are unable to pay commercial fees for trained caregivers.

Soulfree’s aim is to train persons from the marginalised segments of the society like college dropouts, children of convicted prisoners, acid attack survivors, transgenders, and equip them with the training they require to serve as trained caregivers to assist persons with SCI.

The beneficiary will pay as much as possible and the rest of the caregiver’s salary will be subsidised by Soulfree. This is how Soulfree aims to truly uplift, enable, and empower those marginalised by circumstances to fulfil their highest potential.

SoulCare Training Institute

The SoulCare Training Institute aims to be the bridge between those who “need care” and those who “need to feel” needed. It will provide Personal Care Attendant certification courses for persons from marginalised segments of society so that they may become sensitised and trained caregivers for those in need. They would have the opportunity to avail practical internship at the Soulfree INSPIRE Centre and gain a valuable career path, while those who need care will get life-saving support.

SoulSport

Sports is a great leveller and SoulSport aims to provide top-quality parasports facilities that will include as many sports that wheelchair users can excel in like track and field, basketball, volleyball, tennis, badminton, boccia, archery and the like. These facilities will be made available to PwSCI as well as other PositivelyAbled persons and for conducting tournaments.

The Shambala Village

Soulfree is a public charitable trust, registered on August 13, 2013 at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Soulfree is a unique effort in the following ways:
  • 🟈 It is perhaps amongst a few organisations run for the PositivelyAbled (Soulfree’s founder is a quadriplegic), operated by the PositivelyAbled (the staff are those with impairments or from other marginalised segments of society) and created to improve the quality of life of the PositivelyAbled.
  • 🟈 Soulfree’s focus is on Spinal Cord Injury, especially women and those living with permanent paralysis below the line of poverty, who face terrible stigma in India.
  • 🟈 Soulfree focuses not only on Healthcare, Livelihood generation, Rural development and Empowerment of the disabled and women, it has a unique impact on the lives of thousands of those struggling from permanent paralysis due to SCI.

Soulfree: Phase I

From 2013-2020 Soulfree’s primary focus was to ensure physical and financial self-reliance for persons living with paralysis due to severe conditions like spinal cord injury (SCI), with a special focus on women and those living below the line of poverty.
Due to lack of infrastructure and resources, all the projects and activities focused on empowering Soulfree’s beneficiaries within their respective own homes.

Soulfree: Phase II

The Soulfree INSPIRE centre is a 20,000 sq. ft. facility in Tiruvannamalai, which provides holistic and individualised healing programs and self-reliance training for those living with SCI, with the goal of maximising their independence and optimising their chances of leading a life of dignity and purpose.

Soulfree: Phase III

While Soulfree’s journey through Phase I and Phase II have fulfilled some of the dreams, they do not fulfil Soulfree’s ultimate goal – the idealistic dream of ensuring that no person, woman or man is forced to commit suicide due to his/her physical condition, which they have no control over – or in other words, a true representation of the UN Member States pledge to ensure “no one will be left behind” and to “endeavour to reach the furthest behind first”.

The ultimate goal is to create an inclusive village – The Shambala Village, where persons with severe disabilities like SCI can coexist in harmony and create a symbiotic ecosystem with others, either those who have been rejected by society or those who have rejected the fickle yardstick with which society measures human ability and value.

Premise

  • 🟈 An impairment can happen to anyone at any time, but disablement is a social condition.
  • 🟈 We are much greater than the sum of our parts and if those who are oppressed and marginalised by mainstream society unite to create a unique ecosystem where everyone is accepted as they are, it is possible to create a peaceful, inclusive community where all positive abilities are optimised for the greater good.

Goal

  • 🟈 To create a self-sustaining, inclusive village where persons will have the basic right and freedom to live their lives with dignity and purpose, regardless of ability, reassured in the knowledge that they will not be abandoned or forced to commit suicide for any reason whatsoever.
  • 🟈 To bring together persons of similar wavelength in values and find niches where each person’s ability is able to shine through to its highest potential.
  • 🟈 To generate businesses that will employ wheelchair users and others with severe impairments, so that we create a financially self-sufficient village that can shine as an example in the world!

In simplistic terms, the dream is to bring together those deemed “broken” by society and create the Kintsugi effect, and produce a self-sustaining, unified space where all can live in safety, peace, and prosperity – where each person’s abilities will be valued and optimised.