“Do It Yourself” a project enabling blind and visually impaired people practice their sensory and motor skills and ability imperative for improving their continuous social integration into the society

Families of blind and highly visually impaired children are faced with several concerns such as: fear, sorrow, lack of faith and sharing a belief that blind children are unable to attain the skills for an independent education according to their psychophysical capacities and thus unable to integrate fully into society. In addition, there is a constant fear that children will injure themselves and a misunderstanding why visually impaired children are keen mostly to the hearing sense while neglect other senses such as touch, taste and smell. Indeed, often blind and visually impaired children learn to use their hearing while the other senses remain neglected since parents do not motivate their children into using them. This behavior leads to having children, youth and elder visually impaired people cut out from everyday activities due to the strong belief that the said activities are meant only for the sighted. A prime example is independent movement which is believed to be linked solely to sight while not to orientation, balance and perception.  

Long-term goal: Educating parents about skills and abilities of visually impaired people and the ways to help them use it to their advantage in order to facilitate the learning and growing up process of visually impaired children and other family members. 

Short-term goal: Psychosocial parent’s adaptation to their child’s condition and the parent’s ability to adequately pass on the primary sensory and motor skills to their children in their own homes. Two to three educated children that would upon themselves take part of skills demonstrators.  

Projected activities for the year 2005/2006 are:

• Adapting the working and demonstration areas as well as the educational corner for parents and visually impaired children,
• Introduction classes about the importance of the growth of sensory and motor skills for comprehensive development of visually impaired people,
• Demonstrations and other practical exercises in order to master the orientation in surrounding areas with all active senses.

 

The project will be carried out within the “Homer” associations working areas. For such a purpose the areas will need to be completely redesigned and adapted for demonstration and work purposes, meaning adaptation of a small apartment with the following:

• A room with sections intended for sleeping, studying, listening to music, engaging in hobbies, resting and similar, 
• A fully equipped kitchen with all the essential equipment and appliances to master cooking and cleaning skills. The kitchen will have the options of a direct light on equipment and appliances or the option of complete darkness in order to sharpen the other senses necessary for food preparation,   
• An equipped bathroom area with numerous shelves in order to distinguish the cleaning supplies from those we use for personal hygiene. 

 

The educational process is carried out on a one-on-one basis. The number of demonstration hours a visually impaired person attends will depend on the individual approach and parents’ involvement. A skills demonstrator and a supervisor - consultant along with outside expert associates, will carry out the project. The goal is to include parents and visually impaired children of all ages from all over Croatia.  

Expected results:

We expect to educate parents and relatives, replace their fear with confidence in their children and shorten the grieving period over their visually impaired children. We expect children to independently take care of their personal hygiene, choose food and prepare it, select their own clothes and footwear. From school aged children we expect individual interior decoration and organization of their living areas (tidying and organizing their school work and supplies, using radios, tape recorders, CD players, taking care of their clothes, clearing the clean clothes neatly in drawers and wardrobes, distinguishing clothes, making the bed, vacuuming, dusting and similar). From high school youth we expect a developed sense of aesthetics, choosing their own clothes, fashion details and colors, make up, hairstyle and similar along with independent cooking, ironing and similar household chores, also, taking care of pets, flowers as well as the entire interior and exterior environment of their own home.