Provide Physical Rehab for 10000 Blind Youth

Dear Friends, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

We had a very busy year, while implementing our project to promote independent living for the blind youth.
As a part of our project we continued to promote physical exercising for the blind youth. We have the first Pilates Instructor educated and certified through Balanced Body University, who is legally blind and specializing at teaching the blind people. Anastasiya is our project leader and she is providing her feedback for us:

"...I am 31-year-old legally blind woman. I lost my vision when I was 4 years old after the unsuccessful jump during my ballet dance class. I’ve got my neck injured and later I was diagnosed Visual Nerve Atrophy. No surgeries or corrections could improve my vision.

I grew up in Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second largest city. Before the accident I was a happy active child having a lot of friends and doing different activities. When I turned 5, I became limited from using cultural and recreational facilities; I was not able to enjoy the same activities as did my sighted friends, because of my vision. Active fun games outside with my peers were never accessible for me. I always had to stay inside with my mother reading books or watching movies and being excluded from my community. My dream to become a dancer never came true, as the doors of the Dance schools were always closed for me. That made me feel lonely and insecure and effected my future.

Because of the neck injury and eye disease, I used to lose my balance and often get injuries because of falling down and not controlling the movement. The family could not afford the chiropractors’ appointments and so it was important to find a way to enhance overall health, increase muscles strength and improve balance. The range of physical activities was very limited for me.

As I was growing up and learning to take care of myself I discovered Pilates – a kind of fitness that is good for everyone and is promoted for the dancers. I chose Pilates because I did not have to watch for Instructor, I could relax and listen to the exercise description and perform, it was safe and good for everyone.

Pilates improved my muscles balance, made my body strong, flexible and my posture beautiful; I learned how to concentrate and coordinate my movement in any situation and in everyday life. Physical exercises improved my self-confidence and brought me to a new community where physical and mental health is celebrated.

In my country Ukraine I knew the others having the same problems, and I decided to introduce Pilates to the Blind people by making it more accessible and affordable. In 2015 I was invited to teach Pilates to the blind youth during their physical rehabilitation camps in Ukraine and Bulgaria. I noticed that most of the blind youth never exercised before. Simple physical exercises were never familiar to them. The participants were very weak, inflexible, and with bad posture. It was even hard for them to lay down on the exercise mat and coordinate their movements. When I first started teaching there was a chaos in the room because the participants could not understand cueing asking each other for help. Many of them were very frustrated and insecure. But they kept doing the classes and trying their best. Already in 5 Pilates classes 90% of the blind youth were able to enjoy the class and memorize the names of the exercises. Self-confidence was a great result after only 10 classes. Their feedbacks were about how challenging Pilates was, what a surprise was to feel their muscles and how much they want to continue Pilates. As physical rehabilitation camps were over the participants never had a chance to do Pilates again, as the studios were not accessible for the blind people and the Blind were never welcome.

I am an American citizen now, but after a big research that was undertaken by me and the others I realized that the blind people have very low physical activity and inaccessible fitness worldwide. Fitness is hardly promoted among the blind. You can meet them with poor posture, physically undeveloped and not flexible. All of this increases possibility of injuries, poor health, isolation from community, lack of communication and friends, inability to overcome obstacles and meet the life challenges. It is proven that physical activity for the visually impaired has a greater importance than for sighted people, because in addition to physical and psychological effects common to all people, it provides a therapeutic and motivational effect and helps the visually impaired to integrate into society. The experience of successful situations during workouts can increase their confidence, freedom, initiative, self-control, communication and body image, contributing to social integration.

I started a nonprofit organization called BLISS, Inc. with an idea to increase inclusion and reduction of barriers faced by people with disabilities in everyday life, through implementing programs aimed at improving access to health and fitness settings, access to information, cultural life, leisure and sport.

I founded BLISS, Inc. to be able to implement my dream, which is to introduce active life to the Blind people, make Pilates accessible and affordable for them, make them enjoy their lives while challenging their bodies and changing the world!

BLISS, Inc. Is partnering with Kharkiv Rehabilitation Center Pravo Vibora in order to reach more clients and promote physical fitness for everyone and for free.", Anastasiya Gerets, 31, Green Cove SPrings, Florida, United States

We helped Anastasiya get her Pilates Instructor's education and we are very proud for her success and progress.

Dear friends, due toy our support we can help the blind youth to enjoy their lives, reach their goals and they learn that their blindness can not limit their opportunities.

Please, support us during this winter holidays season! Our project Create Braille books for 1000 Blind Children is paricipating in the Year-End campaign. We have to raise 3000$ from at least 30 different individual donors in order to qualify for the possible prize. The Year-End campaign starts tomorrow, on Tuesday 29^th, 2016. Every donation that will come on Tuesday will get 50% match. The GivingTuesdya with 50% match start at 00;00 am EST and ends at 11:59 pm EST. for Ukrainian time it will be 7 hours difference. So we will start at 7 am and finish at 6.59 am the next day. This is only for Giving Tuesday, but the full Year-End campaign will last for 1 month.
Please, support our project and help us create magic time for our kids!
http://globalgiving.org/projects/ create-braille-books-for-1000-blind-children

Thank you for your support again and again!

Best regards,
Valentina Butenko