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Employment > Awards > N.C.P.E.D.P. - Shell Helen Keller Awards 2004

C. Antony Samy: A life's worth

Antony Samy's life has truly been exemplary. He is a real role model.
Having obtained a Masters degree in Engineering from the US, he chose to use his engineering knowledge in India; to help rehabilitate and integrate disabled people into mainstream society.

In the early 1960s, Antony started as an apprentice with the English Electric Co. to prepare for establishing a Rehabilitation Production Centre. In 1963, he joined as an Engineer in the Swedish Red Cross Leprosy Campaign, which established the first Engineering Workshop for leprosy- affected and other disabled people in India. This was later re-organised as Worth Trust. In 1968, he was appointed as the Director.

Under his guidance as Director and Chief Executive, Worth Trust grew to operate four technical training centres, two transitional schools for orthopaedically disabled children, two production workshops and an agriculture and dairy farm – all for training and employing persons with disabilities in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.

In the mid-1980s, Antony established the Electronic Technician Course for Disabled Youth. In 1987, a Plastic Injection Moulding Production Workshop employing disabled people was set up, competing in the open market and generating profits. The Mobility Aids Production Centre followed and shortly thereafter, the Brailler Project was started, in collaboration with the Perkins School for the Blind, USA.

In between, he was deputed to the I.L.O./U.N.D.P. as Chief Technical Advisor and was responsible for the U.N.D.P.'s largest project for the rehabilitation of people with disabilities in Kenya for four years. He has served as short-term I.L.O. consultant in rehabilitation in Indonesia, Sudan, Mangolia, Nairobi and Vietnam.

The first-of-its-kind in the area of light engineering, Worth Trust is entirely self-supporting and does not depend on any donations from the public or grants from the Government. In more than four decades of his involvement in the field of rehabilitation, Antony has established a replicable model for production workshops, which predominantly employ people with disabilities.

Antony is the recipient of International and National Awards from F.I.C.C.I., N.A.S.E.O.H, Government of India and Government of Tamil Nadu.

Managing Director, Worth Trust
48, New Thiruvalam Road
Katpadi 632007
Vellore District, Tamil Nadu.
Phone: 91-416-2242739
E-mail: worth@md3.vsnl.net.in

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