There’s a lot to be thankful for at the Colorado Center for the Blind. As many families like yours will do today as they gather around the table, our staff and students shared what we were thankful for at our CCB family’s Thanksgiving feast one week ago. Not surprisingly, we are all grateful for one another and the Colorado Center for the Blind.

For our students, they expressed gratitude for the bonds of friendship and support they now share with both their instructors and fellow students, bonds that will last far past the day each student receives his or her Freedom Bell at graduation.

For those of us fortunate enough to teach or serve in some other role at the Center, we frequently shared how lucky we feel to be here, working at a place that has such positive impact on our students. And we can see something new in our students every single day, some new skill or accomplishment that leads to that feeling in each student that they indeed can take charge of their lives with confidence and self-reliance. Blindness doesn’t have to hold them back. What an extraordinary privilege!

Colorado Gives Day 2019 is December 10, and it’s the tenth year of this highly successful program to encourage online giving to Colorado nonprofits like the Colorado Center for the Blind. And we’re proud that we’ve been a part of Colorado Gives Day from the very first!

Sure, we’ll gratefully accept donations any day, any time, but Colorado Gives Day on December 10 gives all of us some distinct advantages. Let’s mention, um, 10 of them!

The date of our annual FAST Thanksgiving activity has been changed from earlier dates you may have seen.

Who?

Blind students of all ages, families and teachers

Where?

Colorado Center for the Blind, 2233 W. Shepperd Ave. Littleton CO, 80120

When?

Saturday, November 23, 2019 from 10:00AM – 2:00PM

Early each year, more than 500 blind Americans tap their canes across Capitol Hill in the District of Columbia to keep appointments at the offices of every member of Congress. It is the Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind, and it is how we make our legislative concerns and priorities known to those who have been elected to serve us. It is how we, the blind, make our voices heard, and doing so is the foundation of our democracy.

For the 2020 Washington Seminar, The Colorado Center for the Blind will assist up to 3 blind Colorado high school students to travel with the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado to the annual Washington Seminar February 10-13, 2019. The scholarships will include the costs of air travel, lodging at the Holiday Inn Capitol and a food allowance. We typically fly on the Sunday before the Washington Seminar begins, returning late on Wednesday.

For the past three weeks, we’ve been delighted to have Adama Conteh as a special student at the Colorado Center for the Blind. Adama is from Sierra Leone, a country of about 6 million in West Africa. She has been in the U.S. under the sponsorship of Hope International, which has provided Adama with training at their headquarters in Tennessee, and transportation to Colorado to attend the Center for these three weeks.

Can’t wait for Halloween to get here? Want something to do on a Friday night? Never been on a scavenger hunt? Well, come and join CCB for a Friday night of fun! We’ll have plenty of activities to test your problem solving skills, mental mapping techniques, spatial awareness, and most of all, your Cane Travel abilities.

We hear tails of what lies beneath the poolroom, or where that screeching down the north hallway comes from, but don’t let those minor obstacles stand in your way. After all, you have goals to achieve, places to be and treats to find.

• A fun and spooky scavenger hunt.
• Bobbing for apples, a fun twist on a good old classic.
• Pumpkin decorating
• Mummy Wrapping, not a rapping mummy.
• A presentation for parents on the ins and outs of independent travel techniques.

And we’ll have pizza, too!

During the latter part of August in Colorado, and into the first week or so of September, we are all going crazy about Western Slope peaches. They are big, they are juicy, and they are to die for. They are in the supermarkets, the farmers’ markets and many from the Front Range make the trip across the Divide to get a case or two, and maybe even attend the Palisades Peach Festival. They end up in cobblers, pies, crisps, freezers, and we have heard at least one reported instance of homemade peach ice cream. Some folks never get around to any of that, but eat as many as two to four fresh peaches a day during this period.

“FAST” stands for Fun Activities & Skills Training, which is our monthly school-year program directed at blind youth and their families. FAST activities will occur on either the second Friday evening or second Saturday of each month.

Back to School: Setting goals, seeing progress, and finding success!

Who?

Blind students of all ages and their families.

What?

CCB’s FAST Program.

Where?

Colorado Center for the Blind
2233 W. Shepperd Ave.
Littleton CO, 80120

When?

Friday September 13, 2019 from 5–7:30 PM.

You can’t keep Nicky out of the news. Glenwood Springs’s Nick Isenberg, who first attended our Seniors in Charge program and then came back to complete the Independence Training Program at age 73, is back in the news where he spent his professional career. This time it’s as “The Tactile Traveler”, the monthly radio program and podcast he launched on KDNK in Carbondale July 30.

KDNK is a public access radio station which, according to its web site, reaches over 100,000 listeners from Rifle to Leadville to Marble, as well as streaming on the web. Here’s what the web site says:

Nicky News Premiers “The Tactile Traveler” on KDNK Journalist Nick Isenberg applies his skills and experience to a new show that seeks to “empower blind and low vision people to explore the world and help the sighted to see the world in a new way.”