December 2017

We wanted to bring your attention to a couple of newspaper articles that appeared in November and brought attention to the Center. Both reflect great partnerships that help us ensure that our students can, as our tag line says, learn to “Take Charge with Confidence and Self-reliance!”

The first, from November 5, appeared in the Denver Post’s YourHub. It’s about our neighbor and partner, Angel Concept in downtown Littleton. The article isn’t about the Center, but it features one of our students who has been learning job skills there. For a number of years, we’ve counted on Angel Concept to also mentor one of our summer youth in the “Earn & Learn Program”, helping them gain valuable work experience.

Here’s the article by YourHubs Holly Graham:

Disadvantaged women get a chance to build confidence, learn retail skills at this Littleton boutique

Editor’s Note: Cesar was the final student to graduate in calendar year 2017, on Friday, December 15 in fact. This is the post he made just hours after receiving his Freedom Bell. His parents drove up from Phoenix and he returned with them before our coldest weather set in, assuring us all that he was looking forward to his family’s traditional Christmas sitting around the pool. As he states below, he’s taking the skills and belief in himself as a blind person home with him.

Editor’s Note: Libby graduated from the Center this fall. She recently sent us this photo following a tour to this beautiful spot in her home state, a Navajo Tribal Park. It’s a great testament to how far a blind person can go with a white cane. Sounds like a great trip Libby!

I got to mark Antelope Canyon off my bucket list. I traveled up to northern Arizona with my cane and explored the wind- and water-whipped walls. It was absolutely spectacular! So very grateful to have had the training with my cane so that I could still navigate the dark canyon along with the rest of the tour.

Access to concepts and information presented in graphical form has long been a challenge for blind college students. In the past couple of decades the surge in digitally-displayed content has, well, gone supernova. Thus, blind college students need to develop basic tactile literacy with two- and three-dimensional representations that their sighted peers may have learned much more informally through media such as picture books, television, film, or YouTube. Blind people learn how things look best by touch.

Descriptions are a stop-gap, but only that. Thus, one aspect of our College Prep class’s goal of preparing our students to be savvy and nimble in gaining access to their studies involves taking a look at the kinds of things colleges may throw in front of them and expect them to be able to interpret.

Here we are with a white Christmas in Colorado when it was looking pretty dusty and dry. Naturally, the Center closed for the holidays, but we finished up in the spirit last Tuesday. Our traditions involve a breakfast together, provided by the GraceFull Cafe in downtown Littleton consisting of very large and very delicious breakfast burritos. (Yes, that’s a recommendation for the burritos and the GraceFull Cafe!)

The holidays are a time of giving, and our volunteers at CCB give a lot of their time to drive, read and other necessary tasks at the center. We invited them to a lunch in October, but let’s also acknowledge all they give at this time of giving and sharing.

Last Friday’s Senior Holiday Party brought together members of all three of our weekly Older Blind Programs groups that meet at the Center – Tuesday, Thursday and Friday – along with sighted and unsighted spouses (insider’s joke), and both old and new friends. There were adult children and grandchildren. There was plenty of food, lots of laughs and thanks for our great Older Blind Programs staff. But really, what everyone was celebrating was one another.

The thing that makes a difference in the lives of newly blind people is other blind people to help them to understand that blindness need not hold us back. And then, a little farther down the road, the once-newbies are passing it on to the next round of new ones.

Happy Holidays!

Friday, December 15 is the annual Older Blind Programs Holiday Party at the Colorado Center for the Blind, and the Tuesday group got into the kitchen this week to bake cookies for the event. Among the cookie corps was CCB founder and Chair of our Board of Directors, Diane McGeorge. Also our Volunteer Extraordinaire, Diane is often here twice a week to assist with Braille classes and to participate in Older Blind Programs group meetings and activities.

The Older Blind Programs party will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. here at the center. Lunch will be served and attendees are welcome to bring additional treats and goodies which are already cut for serving.

Tuesday is art day anyway, but this week it was art day all day long. Every student and staff member worked in the art room with Ann Cunningham and Jenny Callahan making ornaments, holiday cards or whatever else suited their fancy. Without a doubt, everyone enjoyed the break from regular classes and the chance to get into the holiday spirit!

With many students and the results of their projects, supplies ranging from clay to wax to stone and of course the tools to work with each, an art room can quickly succumb to forces best summed up in the statement:

“All things tend toward disorder.”

This may be a paraphrase and we certainly don’t recall who might have made it, unless it was Spock or Data on their respective iterations of Star Trek. But that statement sums up the state of things when Alex laBarre, a candidate for Eagle Scout and a member of Troop 457, asked if we had a project he could do as part of his final requirements.

Dugan graduated this fall, proudly ringing his Freedom Bell.

And students keep right on ringing their Freedom Bells this week and next, and on into the New Year! Thanks to the 69 individuals who gave online on Colorado Gives Day, December 5, as well as the two dozen or more who brought in checks or cash. We especially want to recognize the Tuesday morning Older Blind Programs group who passed a bucket around the room for contributions at the urging of John Batron. Our total for the Day was $13,353.

In addition, the weeks of November preceding the big day saw us collect another $10,000-plus.

Colorado Gives Day again broke its previous giving records, with $36,129,285 in donations from more than 150,000 donors. Our portion was modest compared to that number, but we are very happy and grateful for our small part and the opportunities these funds offer to our students. It’s great to be part of this statewide effort in its eighth year!

Starting with a little turkey structured discovery right up to the point where we start stuffing our faces, when the videographer puts away his camera to get in line. Even journalism has its natural limits.

Each student who meets all the requirements for graduation from the Colorado Center for the Blind earns a Freedom Bell. Ringing that bell symbolizes that they are free to pursue the lives they want, free from dependence and lack of blindness skills, ready to challenge society’s low expectations with “Confidence and Self-reliance”.

It’s a very long road, and a difficult one that leads to the day our students get to ring their very own Freedom Bell, but every step is worthwhile!

We believe that the Freedom Bell signifies not only the individual’s new-found freedom, but greater freedom for all blind people from the many misconceptions about blindness and the barriers to full participation that result.

Our alum Poonam Vaidya of Bangalore was recently part of a BBC World Service radio episode of “The Conversation.” She spoke about blindness with another guest, a blind attorney from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Shortly afterward, the BBC posted this short video of Poonam. Check it out:

https://www.facebook.com/bbcworldservice/videos/1779617258724059/

Thanks to the generous support of so many, Colorado Gives Day (CGD) is truly an important part of our annual fundraising. Your contributions support our youth and senior programs as well as challenge recreation and art activities. We thank you for your past support and hope you will continue to support us with your donations in 2017 and by spreading the word about the work we do every day to make positive changes in the lives of blind people of all ages.

For our part, we pledge to continue to bring all the energy and ingenuity we have to innovate new ways to assist blind people to “Take Charge with Confidence and Self-reliance”!

Make a gift on COGivesDay, or schedule a gift now!

Last Monday our student J.D. couldn’t wait to report his big news.

“Good news isn’t as good if you can’t tell someone,” he said at morning announcements.

He went on to tell us that he had been named Editor of the Colorado Fire Fighter, the newsletter of the Colorado State Fire Fighters Association (CSFFA). His increasing skill and confidence with nonvisual access to computers and the Internet permit him to put his native skills in writing and editing to work on the CSFFA newsletter.

J.D. was a volunteer fire fighter in northeastern Colorado for many years before becoming blind a year and a half ago, and is still strongly dedicated to the CSFFA and the work its members do across the state.