Sanya Goenka, an eleven-year-old student from Massachusetts, is an ardent volunteer for AIF. Earlier this year, she participated in AIF’s Light a LAMP Campaign and raised over $3,000 in online funds. She got so excited about AIF that she visited an AIF Ability-Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE) site earlier this summer in Mumbai. Below is a blog post she wrote about her life changing experience.
This summer, I took a trip to Mumbai with my family and visited the National Association for the Blind, a partner of AIF’s Ability-Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE). It was a very touching experience. Julie, the Head of the Association, showed my family and I around, but before that she gifted us some candles made by the visually disabled. They were absolutely beautiful!
We started with a visit to the recording room, where teachers would record books by voice, and then give the books to the visually disabled students to hear with a headset. I thought that the recording idea was just brilliant!
Next we got to visit the employment office where visually disabled people were filling out applications to get jobs and a woman was helping them out. There were also some posters in the room of how they sell handmade gift bags and some others with awards given to the visually disabled who got really good jobs by working hard. This showed me that anything is possible if you put your mind to it!
After that, we visited a kitchen where a few visually disabled people were cooking food with no help. It was an inspiration to see that.
We also saw a call center for Vodafone where visually disabled people were working and making calls to sell the cell phone plans. The last thing was saw was the Braille printing press. The newspaper was written in braille so that visually disabled can read it by feeling the letters instead of looking at them.
It was just commendable to see how much work the association was doing to help visually disabled people. At the end of our visit I gave Julie a check of Rs. 5,000 for the Association. This was all the money that I had received as gifts from my grandparents, aunts and uncles for my vacation. I learned a lot on our visit and was hoping to come back sometime soon!
