Special girl wins national award

This is a story about a family in Visakhapatnam, India, who sacrificially gave up their careers to take care of their 16-year-old daughter, Shreya, who has Down syndrome. Their efforts bore fruit when Shreya excelled in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi and won a national award for individual excellence under the Shrestha Divyang Balika’ category. Shreya also won the award for empowerment of persons with disabilities, Divyangjan 2022, and received it from President Draupadi Murmu last week. Shreya is now pursuing an intermediate degree and has been doing stage performances for a decade. Her father, Siva Prasad Mishra, who was a teacher in Odisha, and mother, Padmavathi, who worked in the computer section in the Indian Council of Dental Sciences, left their jobs to take care of Shreya.