Thirty-one-year-old Triveni Shinde was born totally blind in a village near Satara district in Maharashtra. Her father is a retired government employee, and mother is a homemaker. Triveni’s blindness came as a rude shock to her family, as they were completely unaware of how to deal with a disability. The parents lacked awareness about any possibility of living life with blindness.
 
She was largely ignored by the parents as well as the siblings who only saw her as a burden. It was Triveni’s grandparents who cared for her and explored opportunities to bring her to Mumbai where they lived. The hope was to find better opportunities in a city like Mumbai.
 
Triveni was 7 when her grandparents met with an employee who worked in a residential school for the blind in Dadar. The girl was admitted in this school, and she studied up till Class X here, reading and writing in Braille.
 
The young girl aspired for financial independence as she faced hostility from immediate family from an early age. As she pursued graduation in Arts, she also underwent rehabilitation training, learning computers and mobility to navigate the physical and digital world on her own.
 
She managed to find a job in an export house as a marketing executive in 2019 but only to lose it to the Covid pandemic. Once she started running out of her savings, she contacted the Eyeway Helpdesk to explore new job opportunities. The counselor at the Mumbai Helpdesk suggested different vocational training programs for her to become employable.
 
She was advised to enroll for an acupressure massage course at the National Association of Blind in Mumbai. Triveni was recently certified in the program and has started receiving client leads converting into independent income. The counselor further motivated her to acquire different skills to widen her scope of earnings.
 
Team Eyeway