Self-Determination

That was the cry of excitement on Tuesday, April 27 when our Senior Services Program held its first in-person group meeting at the center in nearly 14 months. A dozen intrepid souls made their way across the Metro area to sit together in one room to talk about blindness and how it affects their lives.

When a foot of snow fell in late February, students leaped at the chance to make a snow person, as they called it. For those from warmer regions of the country, it was their first such creation. The result, pictured here, was affectionately dubbed Callie Rado. Wearing sleepshades and a pandemic face mask, she is a testament to being a student at the Colorado Center for the Blind in 2020 and 2021. In the warm days of the last couple of weeks, Callie of course diminished considerably.

The skills of independence for our blind students, and indeed for our staff, are more critical in these difficult times than ever before. Even though the world has changed we all at the Colorado Center are still able to work with our students so that they will gain belief in themselves and be able to move forward with confidence and self-reliance!

Support us on Colorado Gives Day this Tuesday, December 8. And you can schedule a donation tonight if you like so that it will be counted on Tuesday.

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.

https://youtu.be/TSU7-eTRrbo

Last month we celebrated Juneteenth for the first time at the center, thanks to a request made by two of our students, Q and James, shown left to right above.

James is from Georgia and wanted to have a Juneteenth celebration because the day is celebrated back home. Julie readily agreed. Barbecue being the traditional way to celebrate, James determined to grill up burgers and brats for the entire center, with delicious baked beans and corn on the cob, of course. Home Management Instructor Dishon Spears gave him lots of support. Then In philosophy, we read the Emancipation Proclamation and Q led a discussion of its continued importance to Black Americans.

Executive Director Julie Deden wrote this salute to the final five students graduating from the Colorado Center for the Blind in 2019.

Colorado Gives Day is this Tuesday, December 10, and as we do each year at this time, we are asking for your financial support for our programs at the Colorado Center for the Blind. In the next couple of weeks, five students will graduate from our Independence Training program. Each of these students have made tremendous accomplishments that will propel them towards an exciting life. Each of them now realizes that being blind does not need to stop them from doing what they want to do with their lives. By introducing you to these students and their compelling, unique stories, we hope you will be inspired to make a contribution to the Colorado Center for the Blind on December 10. As I wrote about each of them, I was inspired myself!

On a recent visit to the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, Center Director Julie Deden and I were able to preview the new McGeorge Living Room at the NFB’s headquarters. It is a comfortable, couch-bestrewn space with a fireplace in the center of the room. From one corner comes the soothing sound of trickling water. It’s the lovely fountain shown in the photo, a Rocky Mountain accent in the heart of Baltimore.

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.

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.”

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!