According to Mohammad Tawfiq Bellow, founder and general manager of Jeddah-based Ebsar Foundation, the campaign covers students, teachers as well as family members and neighbors of blind children.
“We want a change of attitude of society vis-à-vis blind children. We want to encourage parents of blind children not only to send their children to school but also train them on how to help their children in their homework and other study-related issues,” Bellow said.
As part of the campaign, 10,000 of the language kits will be handed over to individual students and their progress will be monitored through various means.
The remaining 8,750 pieces will be distributed in other Arab countries.
“We are focusing on poor countries. The first lot will go to the Palestinian territories. Then to Yemen and Sudan,” said Bellow, who is also Saudi Arabia’s representative to the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI).
In 2006 the ICEVI launched a four-year global campaign to target four million blind students.
Ebsar is holding a one-day symposium at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Jeddah on April 10 where teachers dealing with blind students will be debriefed about the project and ways to monitor the progress of each student.
The literacy campaign will be followed by another campaign in which 1,500 pieces of Ebsar text-to-speech software developed by Sakhr Company will be distributed to individual blind students.
“There are approximately 20,000 visually impaired children in Saudi Arabia. Few, if any, of these children have access to computer training and English language at primary education level. Hence, computer literacy drive,” Bellow said.
To buy the Braille-learning kits, Ebsar raised SR3 million through a fund-raising drive. “Now we would like to urge businessmen and members of the general public to come forward and help Ebsar’s mission to spread computer literacy among visually impaired children,” he added.
Ebsar Foundation ran the only clinic for the visually impaired in Saudi Arabia, but it has been closed since January because of a lack of trained optometrists or ophthalmologists. Bellow said he is working on getting trained personnel from India.
