We put this video together to serve as our report to the NFB of Colorado’s 2020 Virtual Convention October 29-31. We wanted to show the creativity of our staff and determination of our blind students of all ages to obtain the blindness skills that mean independence, which are necessary despite this pandemic. In fact, the importance of independence and blindness skills is even more critical than ever. Since filming and first showing this video, we have again moved our Independence Training Program (ITP) to be virtual until after the first of the year, while also discontinuing in-person (and socially-distanced) training sessions with our blind seniors. Clearly whether blind or sighted, resilience is a key to coping in 2020 and beyond. And resilience is something we at the Colorado Center for the Blind and in the National Federation of the Blind have some experience with.
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.
In this part of the world, the BBC’s World Service can be heard during normal sleeping hours on one of our public radio stations. This week our volunteer photographer/videographer Mike Thompson had the BBC World Service on while falling back to sleep in the wee hours when he heard a familiar voice and a familiar name – Poonam Vaidya.
Stepping on that plane a month ago I thought everything would be easy and I wouldn’t learn anything this summer. That’s not the case at all. I would say the sleep shades helped me see. At my school I learn a lot about living successfully as a blind individual, but coming here has been a whole other experience.