Home Management

Make a Colorado Gives donation that celebrates Duncan Larsen and our blind seniors!

Duncan Larsen’s commitment to instilling confidence in all blind people goes back to her earliest professional years in Nebraska. She was one of our founders in 1988 after moving to Colorado. In fact, Duncan was the cane travel instructor on that storied first day when she traveled to the Center with those first students in a blizzard. Since that time, Duncan has changed thousands of lives.

In June, 2022 we hosted journalist Jason Strother for a week of training at the Center. Jason, who has worked for years as a free-lance reporter and was headquartered for a time in Seoul, South Korea, was researching a story about how blind people obtain food. Groceries, that is. His interest in this subject is personal, as he describes in the podcast linked below, Jason has a form of Macular Degeneration, and in recent years changes in his vision have increasingly presented barriers when he shops for food. So, he took a journalist’s approach to see how blind people went about obtaining their comestibles, and that included a stop at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton.

Students from every continent and every epoch imagine, even if only idly, of someday, somehow turning the tables on their teachers. Likely they don’t realize until they have done it, that their teachers also may see such a reversal as an opportunity to return the torment.

That’s partly the story of Role Reversal Day 2022, held on Friday, February 4. Hand it to the leadership of the CCB Student Association for organizing carefully and thoroughly, putting staff into groups and planning the schedule, even reviewing lesson plans from each ”teacher of the day.” This is the group, remember, that collected necessary items for the NICU babies when Avista Adventist Hospital was forced to evacuate during the December, 30 Marshall Fire in Boulder County. They also received an additional $820 in cash donations which were donated to the Marshall Fire relief fund.

This December 7 you surpassed previous years with your support for the Colorado Center for the Blind and our programs for blind people of all ages, making 2021 one of the best we’ve been lucky enough to experience on Colorado Gives Day. And we’ve been part of it from the very beginning.

So, we are more grateful than ever for the incredible support of our community in one of the more difficult years any of us may have experienced.

It’s Etiquette Day in Home Management, and one of our newest students decided to dress up for the occasion. Sure, his attire is not strictly “black-tie” but definitely a cut or two above our normal business casual.

For Etiquette Day our Home Management teachers, Delfina and Stefanie walk students through everything from proper place settings to the techniques of maintaining polite manners when you can’t see your food.

Dan H took this as an opportunity to set himself apart. Every item from the brown felt hat, to the suit coat from Korea, to the tiny tie and the rings and beads, have some significance related to important people in his life – his mother and father, his sisters and his fiancée.

Maura finished high school last spring and plans to go on to college next year. Before she did that, however, she was determined to obtain the skills she needed to be independent as a blind person so that nothing could hold her back in college, or beyond. We’ll let Maura tell you how it’s going in this post she made last month on Face Book. And we hope you will make a donation today, Colorado Gives Day.

These past few days have been so incredible! On Friday, I completed my second CCB graduation requirement by making my mini meal. This meal is to serve 15 guests and you have to cook 3 dishes. I made rolls, potato soup and Oreo pudding pie, and I had a little over 2 days to shop for and prepare the food from scratch. Everything was a hit, especially the Oreo pie, and I felt so much excitement and energy after all was said and done.

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.