General Colorado Center Information

Colorado Gives Day 2019 is December 10, and it’s the tenth year of this highly successful program to encourage online giving to Colorado nonprofits like the Colorado Center for the Blind. And we’re proud that we’ve been a part of Colorado Gives Day from the very first!

Sure, we’ll gratefully accept donations any day, any time, but Colorado Gives Day on December 10 gives all of us some distinct advantages. Let’s mention, um, 10 of them!

Early each year, more than 500 blind Americans tap their canes across Capitol Hill in the District of Columbia to keep appointments at the offices of every member of Congress. It is the Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind, and it is how we make our legislative concerns and priorities known to those who have been elected to serve us. It is how we, the blind, make our voices heard, and doing so is the foundation of our democracy.

For the 2020 Washington Seminar, The Colorado Center for the Blind will assist up to 3 blind Colorado high school students to travel with the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado to the annual Washington Seminar February 10-13, 2019. The scholarships will include the costs of air travel, lodging at the Holiday Inn Capitol and a food allowance. We typically fly on the Sunday before the Washington Seminar begins, returning late on Wednesday.

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.

During the latter part of August in Colorado, and into the first week or so of September, we are all going crazy about Western Slope peaches. They are big, they are juicy, and they are to die for. They are in the supermarkets, the farmers’ markets and many from the Front Range make the trip across the Divide to get a case or two, and maybe even attend the Palisades Peach Festival. They end up in cobblers, pies, crisps, freezers, and we have heard at least one reported instance of homemade peach ice cream. Some folks never get around to any of that, but eat as many as two to four fresh peaches a day during this period.

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.”

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.