By Ilakkiaarasi | Fundrising Executive
Before Diwali, people clean, renovate, and decorate their homes and offices. During Diwali, people dress up in new clothes or their best outfits, light up diyas (lamps and candles) inside and outside their home. But the visually-impaired enjoy Diwali as much as any one with two pairs of eyes do, and especially if they are among friends in a hostel.
Indian Association for the Blind (lAB), based in South India is a well-known non-profit organization working to provide education, employment, training and rehabilitation for the visually challenged from rural areas. Late Mr. S.M.A.Jinnah, the visually challenged activist and a group of like-minded visually challenged people founded IAB in 1985.
Since its inception, IAB has educated and rehabilitated more than 23700 visually challenged children and youths mainly from rural areas of Tamil Nadu. Diwali is not only about celebrating light but it's also about spreading light. This drive helped us to raise funds by $647. Thanks to all the philanthropists who gave hands to raise this much.
There are three kinds of visually-impaired people, and for each category Diwali holds a different meaning. For those blind by birth, the festival of light is just a medley of sounds. For the partially blind it’s a blurred of vision of sparkling lights and some can even peer at the brands and check the ones they like. For those, who are on the verge of loosing sight it’s the time to pack in memories of lights and colours.
At the hostel here they have an edge over the other two categories, who often “seek help” from them to identify the firecrackers and the 'danger' they pose. “Living whole life bare vision is a very difficult thing. They are very happy people though they don’t have eyes to see. But to survive in this big bad world is very difficult when you can’t see. Of course, God has given them much more than their vision but the fact still remains that it’s a different life than us.
Diwali celebrations are incomplete without bursting firecrackers. But for the visually impaired the fun of bursting firecrackers is an unfulfilled wish. We look forward to raising more for this cause. As always, we, along with GlobalGiving, will do our best in reaching out to generous donors across the Globe and will strive to bring happiness on the face of each of our beneficiaries.
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By Ilakkiaarasi | Fundrising Executive
By Ilakkiaarasi | Fundrising Executive
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