A Summer Program for the Blind

A Summer Program for the Blind

Visually impaired children face unique challenges in their development. If you care about inclusivity, empowerment and even human rights, the development of visually impaired persons matter. The Belize Council for the Visually Impaired has been leading the charge for decades. In this week’s Look on the Bright Side, we stopped in to see how the organization is engaging visually impaired youths through its summer program after a two year hiatus.

Sabreena Daly, Reporting

The Belize Council for the Visually Impaired has an unofficial register of persons who have accessed its services and have been diagnosed as irreversibly blind. As of today, that number stands at approximately fourteen hundred persons across the country. Included on that list are visually impaired children. So, BCVI provides a number of services to equip, enable and support these persons free of charge. One such service is its annual summer program for youths.

Carla Ayres-Musa, Executive Director, BCVI

“The idea for summer camp started out in 1997, and it started out just as a way to bring everyone together to get them to see different parts of the country. And so we did lots of field trips. And then we realized as we were getting children who were ready to go into school, that they needed that foundation of braille or computer use or orientation on mobility. So we would bring them in to socialize and to learn to get them ready for the upcoming school year, for a week or two.”

That’s the basis of this year’s summer program. It’s a partnership with the Ministry of Education, Stella Maris School and other stakeholders. For one week, visually impaired youths will learn the fundamentals of using a computer, orientation and mobility, as well as reading braille.

Carla Ayres-Musa

“We have different levels of advancement replacement when it comes to computers, and we work with a Texas speech software called N V D A, that BCVI provides on the laptops that we give to the students. And for the basic learning, we start with how to turn on a computer, the parts of a computer, your home keys, and then this, this more advanced, older group is gonna be doing things like surfing the web, how to use Microsoft Office. Some of them actually know how to do coding and are very interested in that, so, um, our IT officer has been trying to find ways to incorporate that as well to make it fun for them.”

Dayel Carvajal is a volunteer this year. He is no stranger to BCVI’s Summer Camp or any of the participants here. He is here to assist others like himself who may not be tech savvy.

Dayel Carvajal, Visually Impaired Volunteer, BCVI Summer Camp

“I decided to come back as a volunteer because I know that a lot of us would struggle sometimes with technology, especially computers or smart devices. So I came back and I figured that I would try to do my best to teach everyone I could about what I have learned over the years and what I’ve, what type of experiences I’ve had. With me, I have Alyssa Fisher and she started doing typing first, but it seems that she is a bit more advanced than just typing lessons. So we moved on to browsing the internet for questions, asking Google questions, researching, and then after that we went on to creating files and folders and learning how to do copy and paste and simple tasks that you might need to do for school.”

Sabreena Daly

“Do you, do you know what you typed?”

Alyssa Fisher, Participant, BCVI Summer Camp
 “Yes, ma’am.”

Sabreena Daly

“Okay. What did you type?”

Alyssa Fisher
 “I typed, my name is Alyssa and I go to high school. Um, my favorite subject is science.”

Carla Ayres-Musa

“We have about 11 volunteers and we have a couple of longtime BCVI clients and summer campers who really do obviously enjoy coming to camp and are happy to be back here helping. This year in our computer class today we have Juan and Dayel who are from Belize City and Orange Walk, and they’ve come in to be able to provide support, not just with braille, but also with orientation and mobility, I mean, computers.”

Children with visual impairment often receive orientation and mobility training to develop their spatial awareness and independent travel skills. This training helps them to navigate their environment safely. Over at Stella Maris, the second half of the summer program is taking place. The older kids are focused on orientation and mobility training, while their younger colleagues are being introduced to braille.

Carla Ayres-Musa

“What we do in our braille classes is for the younger children, we start with a Braille button book and we would hand make those. We’ve had a couple of our volunteers actually make those for us this year, and so they can learn their letters. We also purchase for each student who needs one A Braille typewriter, those cost thousands of dollars and they’re. Not available in the country. So we have to bring them in and we teach them how to use their braille typewriters, and that’s how they start learning, um, in terms of spelling and grammar and, and words.”

Dameon Ferguson, Visually Impaired Volunteer, BCVI Summer Camp
“So this one on the left is key one. The second one is two, key three, and over here is gonna be key four, five and six.  So when we teach letters with us, I say the positions of the keys. For example, we’re going to do key one.  key one. Key one is A, if we want to do B, B is key one and key two. If you want to, I don’t know, g, G will be key one, key two, key 4, and key five.”

The academic journey of a visually impaired student includes learning how to read braille which establishes a new skill set that empowers them to access information independently. Volunteer Dameon Ferguson says learning braille is similar to learning a new language. He also shared that one can only learn it as quickly as interest permits. And like all children, the visually impaired have unique talents and capabilities. For Dameon, it’s his connection to music. He learned to play the Ukulele in only five months.

So, the weeklong program fulfilled its promise of learning and fun. We observed the teachers and their students at work. One thing we did not expect was a visit to the local movie theater. At first, the idea seemed quite strange, blind children watching a movie. But I asked one excited participant to break it down for me.

Alyssa Fisher

“You hear the bass from the back, the boom when something, you know, when the music, the, um, the, the film from the back is playing. Mm-hmm. And you just hear if it’s something like that has a lot of jump scares in it, you hear the crowd go off like, ahhh.”

And our final stop was to see for ourselves. As it turns out, in the realm of visual impairment, imagination soars where only the mind’s eye can truly see. Looking on the Bright Side, I’m Sabreena Daly.