Editor’s Note: We were excited to receive a one-year grant from Colorado’s Next Fifty Initiative in June to provide skills training and employment services to seniors losing vision. The grant allows us to serve “seniors” from age 50 and up. So, this week Duncan, Julie and Dan are all in Grand Junction for our first-ever Seniors in Charge road trip! Here’s the press release we sent out.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Dan Burke
(406) 546-8546

Date: Sunday, August 25, 2019

Training Comes to Grand Junction for Blind Seniors

NextFifty Grant Helps Littleton-based Center Bring “Seniors in Charge” to Western Slope

Littleton – The Colorado center for the Blind (CCB), a world-renowned training center for blind adults, youth and seniors, will conduct its 4-day Seniors in Charge program for nine seniors this week at Grand Junction’s Center for Independence, 740 Gunnison Ave.

Come and tour the Colorado Center for the Blind today, August 12. Take a tour of our facility, meet our staff and students and learn what it is we do at – and why! We have been in Littleton since 2000 and appreciate the welcome this community has afforded us for these 19 years. And we are proud to be part of Western Welcome Week!

Where:

Colorado Center for the Blind
2233 W. Shepperd Ave.
Littleton

When:

4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Monday, August 12, 2019

We will organize small tour groups as guests arrive. No reservations necessary. We’d love to meet you neighbors!

Check out the rest of Western Welcome Week’s Activities!

Holly Scott-Gardner is from the United Kingdom. By many measures, she is a very successful woman, yet she wanted to come to the Colorado Center for the Blind for training. On her first day at the Center, she accepted the challenge to go rock climbing. She attended the National Federation of the Blind Convention with us in Las Vegas last month, and a few weeks ago attended a conference on blindness in Guadalajara, Mexico.

We thought the best introduction to Holly would be to send you to her recent blog post about being at the Center. On her blog site, you can learn much more about her.

Read Holly Scott-Gardner’s blog post, Measuring the Impossible.

Bring the whole family and #comerunwithus #6dotdashco. You can Read more about this year’s 6 Dot Dash 5K, or Go Straight to the Registration Page.

The National Federation of the Blind of Colorado and the Colorado Center for the Blind are partnering again for our 2nd 6 Dot Dash 5k, June 29! Our first year was a big success with 191 runners (and/or walkers) and netting more than $5000 for our Braille literacy and scholarship programs. Not bad for the first lap! Besides, it was a lot of fun.

This year is shaping up to be even bigger and better, with more kid activities, local food vendors, live music and more beer, just to name a few of this year’s additions. It’s a great way to spend a mid-summer Saturday morning!

AGENDA

MAKING CONNECTIONS THAT WORK FOR YOU

3rd Annual Career and College Seminar
Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Sometimes spring arrives in Colorado in waves that feel like that bad bus driver, the one who alternately steps on the gas and then lets off, again and again, rocking you forward and back into half-nausea. That’s how it’s been this year – 80 degree days followed by an icy blast of wind and snow and then it starts again. But underfoot (and a couple of times under the snow), the grass is greening and the smell of the damp, warming soil is like a reassuring promise, while overhead in the budding trees robins and sparrows and towhees announce their return.

Over the past couple of weeks, the college prep class has visited local campuses. Our thanks the staff at Metro’s Access Center and Arapahoe CC’s Student Access Services for sharing their time and expertise with us during our recent visits.

Join us for the April Fun Activities and Skills Training (FAST) on Saturday, April 13 at the Denver Art Museum. We’ll be exploring “Treasures of British Art” at DAM’s Tactile Tables. It’s art that is accessible to everyone, except that there is room for only fifteen in our group! Admission to the museum is free.

We will take a van from CCB to DAM, or you can meet us there. Please RSVP and let us know if you will need a ride from CCB or meet us at the Hamilton Building. Here’s a quick schedule for the day:

This morning, the Tuesday Seniors group hosted The Blind History Lady, a.k.a. Peggy Chong. Chong, a long-time member of the National Federation of the Blind, recently retired to Aurora from New Mexico with her husband, Curtis.

For a number of years she has researched stories and records of blind Americans, some as far back as the 19th century, in order to bring their more or less forgotten or never-known lives to light.

Her “blind ancestors,” as she considers them to be, become more fully rounded-out citizens, and not just Hollywood stereotypes as she tells their stories in person or in print.

These Denver high school students, Deya and Alma were two of the dozen middle school to college prep students who experienced all the sensory data of a spiny dog shark when they opened one up today at the Center. Well, except for taste. Thanks again to Arapahoe Community College’s Biology Professor Terry Harrison for leading these blind students through a meaningful lesson about anatomy – a lesson with the side benefit of learning that vision isn’t the only sense with which to do real science!