History
Graham Bell Centre for the Deaf (GBCD) was founded in 1991, by a small group of young and enthusiastic persons of the locality, in a rented house at Pandua, with two staff and four deafyoung adults (girls), with an objective to provide them with skill training on embroidery, to enable those adult deaf girls to earn their livelihood and to make them confident, self-reliant and contributing members of the society. It was the only one of its kind in the entire 16 blocks of Hooghly District.
Within a couple of months, to address the need and demand of the people of the community,the organization started expanding its activities from vocational training to need based functional education for deaf children of the locality.
Gradually the activities of the organization reached out from one panchayat to 5 panchayets of the block, catering the needs for therapy, education and rehabilitation of the children and persons with all categories of disabilities. The journey that was started through Centre Based Approach, then turned into the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach to ensure the use of local resources and participation of the families and the community to the maximum extent.
At present the organization is operating in major four blocks (Pandua, Polba-Dadpur, Balagarh and Dhoniakhali ) of the district with an objective to cater the four basic needs: Social Inclusion, Therapy, Inclusive Education and Economic Rehabilitation of the persons with disabilities.