Challenges
Traditionally children and young people with disability have experienced exclusion, discrimination and segregation from mainstream education. Some are placed in separate classes or schools. Most of them, however, are denied access to education of any sort.

Inclusive education as an approach seeks to address the learning needs of all children, youth and adult with specific focus on those, who are vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion. A working definition of inclusion is presented in the UNESCO Conceptual Paper “Overcoming Exclusion through Inclusive Approaches in Education. A Challenge and a Vision” (2003), which says “Inclusion is seen as a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education. It involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.”

The principle of inclusive education was adopted at the Salamanca World Conference on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994) and was restated at the Dakar World Education Forum (2000).

The challenges and barriers are manifold and acute. These include;

• denial of access to basic educational opportunities (majority of the children, youth and adults with disabilities being excluded from, either through non-enrolment or drop-out;
• absence or inadequacy of appropriate access and learning environment to respond to the impairments, disorders, injuries and diseases of such persons;
• inappropriately designed, inflexible and content-heavy curricula; and
• untrained teachers, lacking necessary skills to work with children, who have a wide range of needs.

Strategic Objectives
SANKALP has been providing access to and promoting completion of quality education for children, youth and adults with disabilities. The strategic objectives, practiced by the Organisation in conformity with the relevant international instruments on inclusive education include;

• to combat discrimination and remove structural barriers to learning and participation in education;
• to promote a broad concept of education, including essential life-skills and life-long learning; and
• to contribute towards total integration and mainstreaming of the children and young people with disabilities in school and other sectors of education.

Activities
The Organisation recognizes the fact that achieving the right to education for persons with disabilities in basic education is a stupendous task. Inclusion education is not confined to integration of the children with disability into mainstream education. Inclusive education, in fact, is a holistic approach that demands systematic and well-developed modifications in educational contents, processes, structures and strategies.

The Organisation has been relying on the UNESCO toolkit for creating inclusive learning-friendly environment (ILFE), basing on best practices. Appropriate resource materials, both for formal and non-formal learning; have been developed by the Organisation to educate all children regardless of their gender, physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other characteristics. They may be children with disabilities or special abilities, street or working children, children from remote or rural areas, children from linguistic/ethnic/cultural minorities, children affected by HIV/AIDS, or children from other disadvantaged or marginalized areas or groups’.

The focus has been to bring a supportive cluster of community, family and appropriative social support in innovative ways to such education. The underlining essence is to provide careful and practical environments, which place persons with disability into a positive atmosphere of mutual inclusiveness, ideally to the advantage of all concerned.