Older Blind Programs

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.

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!

Take Charge with Confidence and Self-Reliance

Colorado Center for the Blind page

Colorado Gives Day is December 5, and donations received that day online receive a share of an incentive fund, as well as being subject to lower credit card fees. But as we get into the Thanksgiving weekend and all that entails, be assured that you can go to Colorado Gives Day and schedule a donation as well!

Meantime, enjoy the video!

Here are a few photos from the Shared Visions reception at the Colorado Gallery of the Arts at Arapahoe Community College on Thursday night. Everyone got hands on with pieces from Nathan Abels’ painting and drawing classes. CCB students also had laser-cuts of drawings they made in Ann Cunningham’s art class with accompanying Haiku, and CCB alum Jenny Callahan had a number of stone carvings and a bronze in the show.

The Seniors art class had bowls thrown on the wheel in Katie Caron’s ceramics studio. Katie brought her daughter, who insisted on wearing sleepshades so she could try to identify the art tactilely.

The Friday Seniors took a walk around Sterne Park’s pond to do a little birding by ear with Ali Mayes from Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. It was a good day for various ducks and the ever-present Canada Geese!

We’re proud of our senior programs and how they have changed the lives of seniors who have lost vision and the people who love them. We’re excited about how those programs continue to grow – from the residential Seniors in Charge (twice a year), to four support groups (one in Spanish), to ever-expanding opportunities to provide outreach services.

And so we’re proud of our new Senior Program video, made with filmmaker and long-time collaborator Djuna “DJ” Zupancic. The video doesn’t talk about all the program details as much as it endeavors to tell what those programs and services have meant to five seniors in particular.

Embodied in these seniors and in their stories are the values that drive our Senior Services – indeed everything we do at CCB – skills that build belief in ourselves, a community that supports us, hope where there was uncertainty and maybe just a skosh of defiance!

Thanks to DJ for her highly professional and creative work. She gets us!

About 90 people collected in the meeting room on a 95-degree day to share a little summer society. It was CCB’s annual Ice Cream Social, ranging from Confidence Camp kids as young as 6 to Older Blind Programs participants who declined to reveal their ages, and all of the staff and students of our middle school, high school and college-bound students and Independence Training Program.

What they all had in common was blindness and the determination and desire to take charge with confidence, and today that meant taking charge of a drumstick or ice cream bar!

By 9 Monday morning the commotion in the lobby was reaching a crescendo. Fifteen Confidence Campers were arriving for the first of three weeks of learning blindness skills, having fun and yes – becoming more confident as small blind people! The commotion arose from parents dropping the campers off, connecting or reconnecting with their teachers and the other kids.

Tryna Boyd Pratt has directed Confidence Camp for 16 years running, and it wasn’t long before she was assigning three of the older kids to do the grocery shopping. Of course, for kids between the ages of 5 and 11, a teacher goes with them to the supermarket, but their job was to get a shoppers’ assistant and get all the items on the list themselves – a real grown-up skill! By the way, that list was dictated to them and written in Braille!

Here’s to three more weeks of learning, fun, growth and CONFIDENCE!

Delma Taylor and her husband Ed have been attending our Senior Program for longer than anyone. Delma was the one who’d lost her sight, and Ed came for support and to give it as well. A few years ago Ed’s sight failed too, and they kept coming.

Ed passed away in April and, the day after Memorial Day, Delma and her son Ron came with family to plant a Peace Rose in our Legacy Garden. Duncan and some of the seniors came out to the garden as son Ron and great-nephew Isaac (shown in the photo above) did the digging and the planting.

We send our sympathies to Delma and the taylor family for their loss, and thank them for the honor of having Ed’s memorial rose in our garden!