Naina's Inclusive Duniya

Celebrating neurodiversity with friends and allies.

Naina's Inclusive Duniya (i.e. World) is a comic series building awareness about intellectual & developmental disabilities (IDDs). Set through the eyes of a little girl, the comic illustrates lived experiences of her neurodiverse friends and showcases simple yet meaningful acts of allyship. It uses a light-touch storytelling approach to tackle the issue of social inclusion for people with IDDs.

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Shortlisted

Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2021

Established

25K

Children

4

Countries

Target group

Students lower

Updated

June 2024

Our mission is to foster informed, enabling and inclusive communities around neurodivergent people, with a specific focus on persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This requires people to be aware and engaged allies. With our comic and Circles, we nurture allies for meaningful inclusion in educational contexts and public spaces.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

In our foundational research, we found that there is little understanding of common IDDs, which hampers the ability to interact with individuals with IDDs, despite good intentions. This lack of awareness eventually contributes to prejudice and pity, leading to social isolation and marginalisation. Our aim is to demystify IDDs, and empower people to be neuro-inclusive.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Naina's Inclusive Duniya is freely available on Instagram. The central characters have diverse abilities. Some are 'neurotypical' (like Naina), and others have a form of IDD, for e.g. autism, Down syndrome, intellectual disability, dyslexia, cerebral palsy and ADHD. The stories depict daily life scenarios and what allyship could look like.

Using the comic, we design educational experiences for the youth. Inclusive Duniya Circles are 60 to 75-minute sessions done with children or adolescents, engaging them in a friendly conversation about neurodiversity and allyship. Reflective questions and discussion prompts help them interpret the selected stories, and identify how they could be allies to people with IDDs. These can be easily facilitated with materials we provide.

We have created the core of an SEL curriculum based on the comic, and are expanding it. These are short sessions designed to nurture CASEL competencies, which can be easily adopted by schools and conducted by teachers.

How has it been spreading?

We believe that there are change makers at grassroots level within our community, and they should be empowered.
We use a volunteering model for the Inclusive Duniya Circles. We sensitise & train interested allies/volunteers to facilitate the Circles, providing them the materials & support needed. Our volunteers are of all ages & backgrounds - senior secondary students, college students, siblings, mothers, teachers, etc. Circles have been conducted in various parts of India, & in regional languages as well.
In the past 2.5 years, our allies and volunteers have facilitated hundreds of Inclusive Duniya Circles, leading to thousands of children & adolescents having a better understanding of neurodiversity and allyship.
Additionally, our comic has reached over 205,000 people on Instagram.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Naina's Inclusive Duniya is freely available on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/inclusiveduniya/.
We invite all volunteers and allies to conduct Inclusive Duniya Circles with children and adolescents around you!
Once you fill out the interest form, we will send you the Inclusive Duniya Circle Toolkit which has all the materials you need to facilitate a circle.

Media

Like Naina, Let Our Kids Learn Of This 'Inclusive Duniya' Where Differences Are Understood, Accepted, & Celebrated

Reimagining an inclusive universe

Inclusive Duniya Circle at a secondary school in Tamil Nadu

Conversations about neurodiversity and inclusion during an Inclusive Duniya Circle

Inclusive Duniya Circle with friends at home

A message from Naina's Inclusive Duniya

Inclusive Duniya Circle at a primary school in Delhi

Implementation steps

Connect with us

Fill out an interest form for facilitating an Inclusive Duniya Circle here: https://bit.ly/IDcirclevolunteer
Our team will reach out to you and provide the Inclusive Duniya Circle Toolkit.

Prepare for your Inclusive Duniya Circle

Go through the Toolkit, which includes:
- Basic primer information about common IDDs, ableism and neuro-inclusive language to build foundational knowledge;
- Materials to conduct the Inclusive Duniya Circle, including a facilitator script and Powerpoint deck (with a selected set of our Comic stories and supplementary information)
- A recording of an Inclusive Circle as a sample for your reference

Facilitate an Inclusive Duniya Circle

Gather a group of 10-15 children of a similar age group, and facilitate an Inclusive Duniya Circle! This can be done anywhere - in a school, community centre, residential complex, or even your own home. All you need is a device to show the comic stories on the Powerpoint deck or a printed card copies of the story.

Submit feedback

We gain new insights with every Inclusive Duniya Circle that takes place.
Post-session input is valuable for evolvement of the Inclusive Duniya Circle design, and scale our initiative in the most accessible and impactful manner. Your feedback and data is crucial for our support process.
After the Circle, please fill in the short Evaluation Form provided in the toolkit to record basic information and share feedback, preferably in as much detail as possible to make it more useful.

Follow-up

We encourage facilitators to continue hosting Inclusive Duniya Circles with more groups of children.
Additionally, if you'd like to do more Inclusive Duniya Circles with the same group of participants using a different set of our stories, reach out to us via email at srushti.patel@sarvodya.org.