Ms Annapoorna Jayaram, holds a Certificate from London Montessori School for Special Needs. She is a double Graduate in English Literature and Special Education (B.Ed.). …She is a mother of a adult who has “Down Sydrome”. As a strongly determined and young mother she faced terrible irreversible setback at young age with remarkable courage and determination. In an environment of poor awareness during those days, she had to travel to several distantly located centers for various types of interventions for her daughter. During her stay in Kuwait, she worked in a Canadian School for Special Needs and gained lots of teaching and training experiences working with children. She realized that many expatriate children could not get admission in such schools and hence, innovatively thought of starting own teaching Centre so that more poor families could be helped. As a free service, she started a small teaching Centre in her own house. She trained housewife-turned volunteers to become teachers who spared 2-3 hours of their time for the school named “Shanthi School” (a service unit of Sri Sathya Sai Organization, Kuwait). This free Centre received tremendous support. The school keeps growing even at present and has become a model for other Gulf countries including Dubai. Annapoorna realized her strength to build institution and serve society. She felt an early return to India would enable her to serve mothers in India. On return to Coimbatore, she started “Sri Prashanthi Academy” in 2006 as a Co-founder aiming to bring all the interventions under one roof for all types of children with intellectual disabilities. Currently this is run in the name of “Kaumaram Prashanthi Academy”.
