For Some Touching is believing!
Touching is believing! For children who are visually impaired, and who have never seen a tree or a star or a science diagram, the world of tactile diagrams and tactile STEM books opens up a whole new universe, using the sense of touch. Vision-Aid is proud to partner with Raised Lines Foundation (RLF) a start-up coming out of IIT-Delhi to provide high quality tactile Braille books to children in blind schools across India replacing traditional Braille books which were lacking diagrams. We are grateful to Meetu & Ram Gupta Foundation of Boston, and several other donors for their generous support for this program.
This week, two more blind schools joined the growing ranks.
St. Louis School for the Blind
A distribution event for the tactile books was conducted at the school premises of St. Louis School for the Blind, Chennai on Feb 22nd. Members from Vision Aid, RLF and St. Louis teachers handed the new RLF tactile book kits to the excited 16 Class XII students. Few of the students and teachers who’ve used the RLF tactile books previously were eager to share their feedback with the team and the new recipients.
One of the students explained : “My favorite book is the Map Book with which I understood the position of the cities, states , countries and oceans” [ Mas.Lakshminarayan, a student of class XII.]
Poonamallee Blind School
A distribution event for the tactile books was also conducted at the school premises of Poonamallee Blind School , Chennai on 24th Feb. Eleven students received their kits and were excited to explore the tactile books and explain to us what they understood from the tactile books.
“This is the first time I’m able to imagine the shape of a heart!” said a visually challenged student of Class VII. Younger students were thrilled to feel the various favorite shapes in their coloring books and scream the names of the object in chorus excitedly when they identified new shapes like “Apple” . They were delighted knowing they could color independently.
“These books will be very useful for teaching kids of all classes. Our teaching will be much more efficient, and these kids can now imagine things which they have never felt previously. We look forward to your support in receiving such effective teaching learning aids for all of our children to improve the quality of education provided to them” said Mrs. Muda Mary, a primary school teacher .
Vision-Aid is grateful to many supporters who enable this program. It began with a generous gift of a few, and has now spread to several other kind donors who feel inspired to give to this program. Vision-Aid welcomes anyone to donate towards this program to do so in any amount.The hope is to reach blind schools all over India and help more children, who seek to be enabled, educated, and empowered so they can live with independence and dignity!
The kids who are beneficiaries of this program show their gratitide in this video.
