| Ummeed Child Development Center- Capacity Building Needs |
Ummeed is a non-profit organization formed with the specific objective of providing inter-disciplinary care to children with developmental disabilities. The center helps children with a wide range of disabilities such as Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation, Learning Disability, Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, Behavioral Disorder etc.
Ummeed was started by Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy and Ashish Karamchandani. Dr. Krishnamurthy is a Developmental Pediatrician who trained and worked at Harvard University, U.S.A. Being originally from India, she knew that facilities for children with developmental disabilities were very limited in India and so she relocated to India in 1998 to find a way to help these children and their families. Helped by her husband, Mr. Karamchandani, a partner of the Monitor Group (a leading global management consultancy firm), she started Ummeed on November 5, 2001.
Over the years, Ummeed has built a team that includes developmental pediatricians, speech therapists, occupational therapists, a physical therapist, a special educator, and a counselor who provide services such as- Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Psychotherapy, IQ assessments, Educational assessments and Developmental pediatric assessments.
Currently Ummeed sees and average of 70 children per week. However, given there are over 150,000 children with developmental disabilities in Mumbai in Mumbai alone, we need to scale up to make real impact. We also need to scale up to allow us to provide training, do research, and increase our efforts in building awareness and in advocacy. Capacity Building Needs :
Ummeed needs to scale up its operations and in order to make a significant impact in terms of reaching out to the large number of children with developmental disabilities. Expansion of Ummeed’s services to the larger community is primarily dependant on hiring more professionals who can provide services to more children, training of professionals, and expansion of awareness building activities and advocacy. This in turn requires the acquisition of a larger space (3500-4000 sq ft) and the development of adequate infrastructure within this larger space. The average cost of renting this space and developing it to meet our requirements would be 30 lakhs (6 months deposit, renovations etc)
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Rs. 30,00,000 |
Training programs for team members is an important area in which Ummeed needs to build capacity. Since our professionals are the primary means of delivering quality care to our patients’ ongoing training for them is essential. The average cost of such training is Rs.20, 000 per person per year for local training and Rs. 100,000 per person per year for training internationally. On a yearly average, all 12 professionals at Ummeed will undergo local training and 2 professionals will be trained internationally. |
Rs. 4,40,000 Per year |
Workshops (run by various national and international experts) organized by Ummeed are an invaluable capacity building element that both enhances the team at Ummeed as well as the broader professional community (as these workshops are open to all professionals working with children with developmental disabilities). There would be approximately 4 such workshops (2 national and 2 international) in the year (Rs. 25, 000 per national workshop and 50,000 per international workshop) |
Rs. 1,50,000 Per year
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Ummeed’s experience supporting other NGOs is that there are significant behavioral issues (e.g., disruptive behavior in class) when working with children with underprivileged backgrounds. Ummeed would like to hire a full time counselor to work with Akanksha (a NGO that works with underprivileged children) to help them develop programs to address this issue. This will not only be beneficial to Akanksha in terms of helping them build capacity as an organization, but will also help Ummeed build capacity in terms of being better able to replicate such programs with several other organizations in the future.
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Rs. 1,80,000
Per year |
Ummeed also needs to hire an Executive Director to help scale up its operations and put appropriate systems in to place. This person would be someone who can help Ummeed grow from a 5 FTE organization to a 50 FTE organization in 4 years while maintaining the quality of patient care and expanding both in terms of numbers and in terms of types of activities. A challenging role like this would also require someone who has good general management experience, has networks-is willing to use them and is self motivated and passionate about making a difference.
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Rs. 7,20,000
Per year
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Ummeed also aspires to hire other professionals (in specific, an additional speech therapist, and an occupational therapist) in order to be able to reach out to larger numbers of disabled children in the community.
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Rs. 2,88,000
Per year
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Annual Expected Budget for Ummeed Child Development Center
Salaries for professionals
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17 lakhs |
| Rent |
13 lakhs |
| Operating Expenses |
5 lakhs |
| Training |
2 lakhs |
| Total Program Costs |
37 lakhs |
General Comments
Ummeed is at a critical stage of growth and at this point faces 3 key challenges- adequate funding, space and the hiring of new professionals. Given the large number of children with developmental disabilities in Mumbai alone and the paucity of resources available, there is an urgent need to grow organizations like Ummeed. In the long run we hope that programs like ours are replicated and that Ummeed can play a pivotal role in influencing a complete change in the way health care and education can be delivered to children with developmental disabilities and in their social environment.
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