In the Media

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.

On Saturday, April 16, 2022 an international Internet radio concert of 110 mostly blind artists contributed to the World Blind Union’s Ukrainian Unity Fund. More than $85,000 was raised to provide aid to blind Ukrainians displaced or otherwise adversely affected by the current warfare in their homeland. The Colorado Center for the Blind, along with our sister NFB centers, the Louisiana Center for the Blind and BLIND, Inc, were asked by NFB President Riccobono to make our own recordings of support for the effort, as all of us in the NFB and President Riccobono have been deeply disturbed by the horrific conditions faced by all Ukrainians, and especially blind Ukrainians.

This article appeared in USA Today yesterday, November 17. It features our graduate Erin Daley, of whom we are naturally quite proud. In the article, Erin mentions that she loves to travel and will be visiting the Baltic countries. Well, she’s on her way right now!

If you’re a sighted person, you likely have misconceptions about blind people. Time to educate yourselves.

Check out this story on usatoday.com

You know, this pandemic shutdown has been going on for a minute. Especially if you are a student at the Colorado Center for the Blind, or someone waiting to come, or someone newly blind and trying to figure out how to do the simplest things you used to do now that you're blind, let alone how you can live the life you want. Our students' had their programs interrupted, some only a week or two from graduating. Prospective students who've been talking with Executive Director Julie Deden for months found their start dates paused indefinitely.

Editor’s Note: We introduced you to holly some months ago, when the weather was warmer and she was a relatively new student at the center. She comes from the United Kingdom and her drive to attend the Colorado Center for the Blind stems in part from the fact that, as she says “there aren’t any training centers where I’m from.” And that means not even bad ones. Holly is a widely-read blogger on disability and blindness (Catch These Words), and we thought her thoughts on this video after completing our program – one of the more rigorous blindness training programs there is – offer us all an important perspective on what we do here, and why.

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.”

Editor’s Note: We were excited to receive a one-year grant from Colorado’s Next Fifty Initiative in June to provide skills training and employment services to seniors losing vision. The grant allows us to serve “seniors” from age 50 and up. So, this week Duncan, Julie and Dan are all in Grand Junction for our first-ever Seniors in Charge road trip! Here’s the press release we sent out.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Dan Burke
(406) 546-8546

Date: Sunday, August 25, 2019

Training Comes to Grand Junction for Blind Seniors

NextFifty Grant Helps Littleton-based Center Bring “Seniors in Charge” to Western Slope

Littleton – The Colorado center for the Blind (CCB), a world-renowned training center for blind adults, youth and seniors, will conduct its 4-day Seniors in Charge program for nine seniors this week at Grand Junction’s Center for Independence, 740 Gunnison Ave.

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.

We wanted to bring your attention to a couple of newspaper articles that appeared in November and brought attention to the Center. Both reflect great partnerships that help us ensure that our students can, as our tag line says, learn to “Take Charge with Confidence and Self-reliance!”

The first, from November 5, appeared in the Denver Post’s YourHub. It’s about our neighbor and partner, Angel Concept in downtown Littleton. The article isn’t about the Center, but it features one of our students who has been learning job skills there. For a number of years, we’ve counted on Angel Concept to also mentor one of our summer youth in the “Earn & Learn Program”, helping them gain valuable work experience.

Here’s the article by YourHubs Holly Graham:

Disadvantaged women get a chance to build confidence, learn retail skills at this Littleton boutique