CUSO - VSO Article on my experience at KUB
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 21/Jun/2009 19:00, 34 days ago
A few months ago Yvette Macabaug, a program manager from CUSO-VSO in Canada, visited me at my placement at the Kenya Union of the Blind and conducted a short interview. As a result, my story ended up in the CUSO-VSO newsletter called "Impact" this month.SEEKING A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR KENYAAs Fundraising and Publicity Officer for the Kenya Union of the Blind (KUB), overseas volunteer Tali Alexander isn’t able to get out into the filed as much as she’d like.“But when I see these programs in action and the impact they have on people’s lives it just makes me want to work harder,” she says.Lives like five-year-old Aisha, who was born blind into a very poor family in an impoverished community, where visual impairments can be considered a curse. Her mother abandoned Aisha and her father, taking Aisha’s brothers and sisters with her. While her father was away at work most of the day, Aisha was looked after by kind women in her village. Aisha’s father also eventually abandoned her, leaving Aisha to the care of her extended family and some kind-hearted neighbours in their village.Tali, who hails from Ottawa, accompanied the team from KUB when they went to offer Aisha’s uncle a placement for her in a school that was equipped to handle her disability.“KUB gave her the opportunity to go to a school where she would be accepted, where she could learn in an environment that would be easy for her, and where she could have the love and support networks she needs to grow to her full potential,” says Tali.Unfortunately, the terrified little five-year-old couldn’t understand that a tremendously wonderful chapter in her life was about to be written.“For the entire hour-and-a-half of the car ride to the school, she had her hands over her ears because she was so scared,” says Tali.“But last week my colleague went to visit her and reports that Aisha is just thriving in her new environment. She was happy, smiling and laughing, and she’d made tons of new friends. I know she’ll do really well there.”Happy endings like these fuel Tali’s drive to raise money and awareness for Kenya’s only national association of blind and visually impaired people. With more than 43 branches throughout the country, KUB focuses on three program areas: child education and social protection; technology and empowerment for youth; and mentorship and empowerment for adults.A lot of her time is spent writing grant proposals and meeting with potential international, national and local donors to solicit financial support to KUB. She’s also responsible for all communications – both internally to members about KUB activities across Kenya, and externally to the general public to raise awareness about challenges and opportunities for visually impaired people.“There is still an acute stigma associated with blindness in Kenya that starts at early age. I’ve heard of cases where family friends didn’t even know they had a blind child. They were just put away in a room when the friend visited,” says Tali.When children grow up, the barriers continue, with few work opportunities open to them. KUB works to increase their independence with the help of assistive devices, adaptive equipment and support services, and helps them achieve economic self-reliance through small business development and job placements.KUB is also working hard to reduce the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on visually impaired people, who many falsely believe are not sexually active.“Once again, visually impaired people are being left out when HIV/AIDS awareness programs are being developed,” she says. “When you consider that more than 1% of Kenya’s 37 million population is visually impaired, that’s a huge number of people who are missing vital and potentially life-saving information.”KUB is taking a two-pronged approach to the issue– developing accessible HIV/AIDS education materials for visually impaired people, while at the same time working to sensitize the mainstream to their needs.Although the pace of change is slower than Tali knew back in Canada, she says there’s absolutely no shortage of work to do.“I think if there were three of me, we would still keep busy!” she says, smiling. “But even on my bad days, I’m really happy to be here. I’m grateful for this opportunity – it’s tremendously fulfilling and I’m excited about what comes next!”