Calcutta Blind School
A commemorative postage stamp on the Centenary of the Kolkata Blind School :
Issued by India
Issued on Nov 30, 1994
Issued for : The Department of Posts is privileged to issue a postage stamp commemorating the 100 years of Calcutta Blind School, which has been rendering a yeomen service for the rehabilitation and education of the visually handicapped.
Credits :
Stamp : I.S.P. Nashik, based on photographs supplied by Calcutta Blind School.
Text Source & First Day Cover : Calcutta Blind School
Cancellation : Smt. Alka Sharma, Artist Dept. of Posts.
Type : Stamp, Postal Used
Colour : Two Colour
Denomination : 200 Paise
Overall size : 3.91 x 2.90 cms.
Printing size : 3.55 x 2.54 cms.
Perforation : 13 x 13
Paper : Indigenous Un W/M Adhesive Gravure Coated Stamp Paper in Sheets of 50.8 x 53.5 cms.
Number of stamps Printed : 1 Million
Number per issue sheet : 35
Printing Process : Photogravure
Printer : I.S.P., Nasik Road
About :
- The Calcutta Blind School was founded in the year 1894 by the late Rev. Lal Bihari Shah and has been a torchbearer for the education of the visually handicapped in India for one hundred years.
- The school which was started with one blind child in a small college and nurtured by Reverend Shah is today a co-educational, residential school of about 150 boys and girls, affiliated to the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education. It has been successful in attracting the active sympathy and support of the people who have given their unstinted time and labour to the building up of this institution.
- One of the prime concerns of the school is to see that the students join the mainstream of life and secure gainful employment. While, therefore, the school emphasizes extra-curricular activities including music, crafts, sports, physical exercises and even enrolment of its wards as scouts and guides, there is a well planned programme for vocational training, typewriting, light engineering and training for teachers and telephone operators.
- As a crowning achievement in the endeavour to equip the sightless for better job opportunities, the school has implemented a project on computer education. The computer is specially designed with a Speech Synthesizer and a software known as Computer Assistance for the Blind (CAB).
- Many of the students of this school are now working in Government undertakings or in the private sector besides having set up businesses under self-employment schemes with bank loans arranged by the school.
- The Calcutta Blind School has also opened a research wing, where the main focus would be on the study of the socio-economic conditions of the visually handicapped in the context of their family, community and the society at large as well as on education and the preventive and curative aspects of sightlessness. The research wing has plans to also develop training modules for adults.
