Community Service Event: School for the Blind and the Deaf ( #ibmcsc )

On Saturday the team went to the Ekiti School for the Deaf and Blind, which was our community service event during our trip in Ekiti state. Kelsen, Mithilish, and I made an early visit to the school on Wednesday in order to understand the environment and to get some ideas around the ways that we could contribute. We were determined that the day be something more than a “meet and greet” where we shake hands with officials and get a tour – the team wanted to be interactive and get their hands dirty!

After the meeting we came up with one very clear project: to take the computer equipment that they had received a few months earlier and use our expertise to set up their specialised computer lab which could support visually-impaired students. We also asked them to give us suggestions as well in time for Saturday. So we received their listing of suggestions on Friday evening and shortly after we got to the schools we took on the following projects:

Building a computer lab that supports visually-impaired students
Washing clothes
Weeding
Erosion Control (digging a gutter)
Personal hygiene counseling
Cooking
Sporting activities
“The Future” for the Visually-Impaired

I participated in the project for personal hygiene counseling, setting up the computer lab, and “the future.” I have to say that this was one of the best parts of the experience so far. The kids were so thankful that we were just spending time with them, getting to know them, and helping them with things that they might not have been able to do themselves.

I have to say that I am particularly proud of the computer lab. We managed to set up a machine that can make photocopies of braille pages, a printer that can print out in braille, and set up some computers and laptops which support the visually impaired. So both the hearing and visual-impaired kids can take advantage of the computer lab. We also downloaded some activity kits and software from IBM’s On-Demand volunteer community so kids could plays games and do events teaching them more about math and science.

I am also proud of time we spend with the blind children talking about the future. I gave them a homework assignment that they had to write me a letter telling me what they want to be when they grow up and I promised to do some research to find good examples which would help to prove to them they can follow their dreams. And several of us from the IBM team committed to use our personal connections to see what we could do to support the school after we left (we had each begun working on contacting organisations separately and it’s wasn’t until a few days later that it was clear that several of us were reaching out to our personal contacts. It’s moments like these when I am at my proudest to be an IBMer and work with colleagues who think beyond themselves. 🙂

But rather than write a lot of text about it…pictures 🙂