Meet Jolly Joseph who carved the medals for marathon at Infopark

The differently-abled team of Jolly Joseph received special attention at the Marathon at Infopark, Kochi, on February 11th. They carved the medals in wood for the 6000 runners and also participated in a special run at the Marathon.

Wheelchair-bound Jolly’s enterprise ‘Takshan Creatives’ makes customized wood products as per order. He employs people with disabilities at his firm. “Those who participated in the special run included the Takshan team, wheelchair users of Swasharya rehabilitation centre, and hearing impaired trainees of Oorja”, he said.

While working as a graphic designer eight years ago in the signage industry, a tumour in the spine left him paralyzed for life. In those days, the office environment was unfavourable for the differently abled. So he began mentoring students as graphic designer at Oorja. Here, mainly the hearing impaired are trained according to their abilities and they interned at various companies to ensure them a livelihood.

The journey of the specially-abled entrepreneur

Later, with the encouragement of Jayasankar, the founder of Oorja, he founded Takshan Creatives as an ecosystem partner of Oorjja, at Swasraya Training and Rehabilitation Centre. Swasraya supports people with spinal cord injury who use wheelchairs to psychologically and physically overcome the trauma of the disability and to get a firm footing in life. At Takshan some of the inmates of Swasraya also work with him.

Since childhood, he has been interested in arts and crafts and has always wanted to build a creative career. The tumour put a halt to his aspirations for a while. However, Jolly says he has achieved a lot after using a wheelchair.

Takshan takes its name from ‘thachan’, which means ‘carpenter’ in Malayalam. Jolly said that as part of sustainability, Takshan Creatives made medals with wood for the marathon. The Takshan team, along with hearing impaired trainees of Oorja Centre, wheelchair users from Swashraya and people from mainstream were all involved in the work.

The special run was not part of the planned marathon event. For the differently abled, marathon at infopark made their day .

An interview with Jolly Joseph on Mentza in malayalam on June 13th 2022.