Changing how society thinks about disability doesn’t happen through policy documents alone. It happens when children sit together in a festival camp, when a student with a visual impairment receives a medal on stage, when a community learns it has the legal right to demand accessible infrastructure. Across India and the world, several targeted campaigns and programs have been working quietly but powerfully to shift these attitudes – one event, one law, one artwork at a time.
Table of Contents
- Anjali Festival: building inclusion from childhood
- Simulating disability to build empathy
- Sashakt Campaign: making rights real
- The Sashakt Doot: taking the message to every village
- Prerana Samman: honoring excellence against the odds
- Why recognition matters
- International Day of Disabled Persons: a global call to local action
- The scale of the challenge
- Art for Change: creativity as a tool for inclusion
- Art as a bridge between children
- Why disability awareness programs matter
Anjali Festival: building inclusion from childhood
The Anjali International Children’s and Youth Festival is India’s first and only international children’s festival of its kind. Organized by Swabhiman, a pioneering non-profit based in Odisha, the festival promotes inclusion, rights, and cross-disability awareness among children with and without disabilities. It started in 2001 with just 77 children and has since grown into a five-day annual camp held in Bhubaneswar. By 2024, the festival had impacted over 54,000 young lives, drawing over 900 children from diverse backgrounds including remote districts across India.
The festival encourages group competitions over solo performances to foster bonding among children, covering activities such as photography, art and craft, theatre, music, dance, science, and yoga. This design is deliberate – the goal isn’t just to entertain, but to create genuine contact between children who might otherwise never interact.
Simulating disability to build empathy
One of the most distinctive elements of Anjali is an activity that simulates certain disabilities – for example, blindfolding participants to replicate total blindness – so that non-disabled children can gain firsthand insight into the challenges faced by their peers. Rather than explaining disability abstractly, the festival puts children in a position to feel it. This experiential approach is far more effective at dismantling prejudice than a classroom lecture.
The festival also gives formal recognition to changemakers through awards such as the Anjali Award for Bravery, the Anjali Award for Commitment, and Anjali Awards for Service. These honors extend the impact beyond the camp itself, acknowledging the people and organizations working year-round for inclusion.
Sashakt Campaign: making rights real
Awareness about disability is incomplete if people don’t know what they are legally entitled to. The Sashakt Campaign addresses exactly this gap. It is a multi-level, multi-stakeholder campaign involving NGOs, government bodies, media, parents, and individuals, aimed at building awareness about the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (RPwD Act) and existing government facilities – both among persons with disabilities themselves and among government officers.
The campaign’s core goals include raising awareness throughout society down to the family level, fostering respect for the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, combating stereotypes and harmful practices, and disseminating information on existing government schemes and facilities. Without this kind of ground-level information work, even the strongest laws remain inaccessible to those who need them most.
The Sashakt Doot: taking the message to every village
The campaign reached people through the Sashakt Doot – a specially designed awareness vehicle that covered 4,100 km across all 30 districts of Odisha, conducting public meetings in 55 blocks and 30 district headquarters, reaching over 50,000 people. This on-the-ground outreach is significant because it went beyond urban audiences to reach the rural disabled population, where awareness of rights is often lowest.
The RPwD Act 2016 itself is a landmark piece of legislation. The Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Parliament in December 2016 and ensures that persons with disabilities receive the same civil rights protections as all other Indians. The Act explicitly mandates the government to sponsor awareness campaigns, promote values of inclusion, tolerance, and respect for diversity, and provide orientation and sensitization at the school, college, and professional training levels on the human condition of disability.
Prerana Samman: honoring excellence against the odds
One of the most direct ways to challenge the stereotype that disability limits achievement is to publicly celebrate evidence to the contrary. That is the purpose of Prerana Samman. Prerana Samman honors students with disabilities who have secured 75% or above marks in the matriculation and +2 examinations. It is a state-level program that both inspires students with disabilities and encourages other children to strive for excellence – especially in environments where books and trained teachers for students with special needs remain scarce.
The program recognizes students who have succeeded despite a lack of accessible facilities in schools and colleges – no ramps, no trained teachers, no books in alternate formats. By 2024, 758 students had received Prerana Samman felicitations, scholarships, and educational aids.
Why recognition matters
Prerana Samman is not just symbolic. The felicitation makes students eligible for Anjali Scholarships, which help reduce the financial burden of rising college education costs. In this way, the recognition directly opens doors. It also sends a message to families, schools, and communities – that students with disabilities are capable of high academic achievement and deserve the investment and support to get there.
International Day of Disabled Persons: a global call to local action
Every year on December 3, the world observes the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The annual observance was proclaimed in 1992 by the United Nations General Assembly through resolution 47/3. It aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights, and well-being of persons with disabilities, while also seeking to increase awareness of the gains from integrating persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic, and cultural life.
The roots of this day go back further. The foundation was laid in 1981, which the United Nations declared as the International Year of Disabled Persons, emphasizing equal opportunities, rehabilitation, and full participation. This was followed by the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons from 1983 to 1992, which focused on implementing national and international programs for the equalization of opportunities.
The scale of the challenge
According to the United Nations, over 1.3 billion people in the world have some form of disability. More than 100 million of those are children. Children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled children, and 50% of disabled persons cannot afford healthcare. These figures underscore why an annual global moment of focus is essential – not as a formality, but as a recurring commitment.
In India, Swabhiman and its Odisha State disAbility Network (OSdN) partners observe December 3 each year through events, awareness activities, and community programs. The 2025 theme, “Fostering disability inclusive societies for advancing social progress,” emphasizes that true societal progress cannot happen unless everyone, including those with disabilities, is meaningfully included.
Art for Change: creativity as a tool for inclusion
Not all awareness-building happens through campaigns and ceremonies. Sometimes, a paintbrush is the most effective instrument. The Art for Change approach engages children in collaborative creative activities – visual arts, performing arts, and craft – as a way to build connection across ability differences.
Art activities boost confidence, improve motor skills, and enhance communication abilities for children with special needs. Children often find it easier to express feelings through colors, shapes, and textures when words are challenging, and collaborative projects help develop social skills and teamwork in an inclusive environment.
This is well-supported by evidence from disability-inclusive art programs in India. Through mural art projects, young artists in Bhopal demonstrated tremendous creativity while engaging directly with messages about disability rights, inclusion, education, and employment – painting these themes on hospital walls as part of Sightsavers’ Inclusive Art Project, timed to coincide with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Art as a bridge between children
What makes art-based programs particularly effective in disability awareness work is that they create shared experiences rather than one-sided instruction. UNESCO has recognized this connection, partnering with organizations to launch initiatives such as the ‘Discovering Ability’ Art Awards in India, which empower persons with disabilities to become both mainstream consumers and producers of art.
At Anjali Festival, this approach is embedded throughout the program. The festival’s film screenings, performing arts showcases, and craft workshops all serve the same purpose – not to teach non-disabled children about disability, but to let them discover for themselves what their peers are capable of. The result is not pity, but respect.
Why disability awareness programs matter
The programs described here – Anjali Festival, the Sashakt Campaign, Prerana Samman, International Day of Disabled Persons observance, and Art for Change – are not isolated initiatives. They form a layered ecosystem of awareness that works on different levels: building empathy in children, educating communities about rights, honoring individual achievement, connecting local action to global frameworks, and using creativity to dissolve social distance.
The aim of disability awareness programs is two-fold: first, to educate society to eliminate negative and ill-informed attitudes and make people aware that disability can happen at any point in life, and that despite disabilities, people live productive and constructive lives. Second, to make people with disabilities themselves aware of their abilities, existing laws, government schemes, and entitlements. Both sides of this work are necessary. Awareness without access to rights leaves communities feeling informed but powerless. Rights without awareness leave communities uninformed and unable to claim what they are entitled to.
Together, these initiatives demonstrate that disability inclusion is not a specialized concern for a minority – it is a measure of how just and humane a society is for everyone.
What do you think? Do you believe awareness campaigns like Anjali Festival and Prerana Samman are enough to shift long-held social attitudes toward disability – or does lasting change require something more structural? And which approach do you find more effective: creating empathy through direct experience, or empowering people through knowledge of their legal rights?
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