About Ummeed:
Ummeed Child Development Center (www.ummeed.org) was founded in 2001 by Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, a developmental pediatrician, an Ashoka Fellow, and resource person to government and international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Ummeed’s vision is to help children with and at risk of developmental disabilities reach their full potential and be included in society.
Over the last 23 years, Ummeed has provided direct services to 15,000+ children and families, trained over 8500 unique professionals (community workers, as well as doctors, therapists, and teachers) across India, and indirectly influenced the lives of over 0.45 million children and families with or at risk of developmental disabilities. Besides direct clinical services, and training and capacity building, Ummeed’s two other verticals of work have included research (to generate evidence of our work) and awareness building (to sensitize people to the cause and shift attitudes).
Ummeed sees child development, delays and disabilities as a continuum and since 2009, has been advocating for Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs to be inclusive of children with developmental delays and disabilities (which they are currently not). Towards this, Ummeed has itself run inclusive ECD programs in partnership with community-based organizations and some government systems (to show what they can look like), and has been advocating for this shift through publications, agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and other fora. More recently, Ummeed has come across opportunities to expand this work into state-level government partnerships.
