January 4 is World Braille Day, created to raise awareness of its importance as a means of communication for the full realization of human rights for blind and visually impaired people.
This is an initiative that the UN proposes to celebrate since 2019. In the same year, nergroup supported a beautiful development cooperation campaign in Uganda, in which volunteers specialized in ophthalmology checked the eyesight of the entire child population of several communities, detecting in their diagnoses that around 200 children needed simple glasses to improve their quality of life and minimize the impact of their circumstances.
Based on this specific need, the Social Engagement Team set the goal of collecting these 200 pairs of glasses to send them and identify their best use in different needs.
Any of those unused glasses we had at home, from friends, family and even from the opticians around us, were very useful. Not only did we get the 200 target units: we multiplied that target by 5!
A pamphlet in Braille for nergroup
Braille is a tactile representation of alphabetic and numerical symbols using six dots to represent each letter and number, including musical, mathematical and scientific symbols. This writing system is used by people who are blind or visually impaired to read the same books and newspapers as print for visual reading and to ensure communication of important information to themselves and others and represents competence, independence and equality.
In 2021 we intend to produce a brochure in Braille that summarizes the purpose of nergroup as an organization and thus be able to share our values and the New Style of Relationships with people affiliated to ONCE in the Basque Country, a group that brings together more than 4,500 people.
In addition, we will discuss the possibility of carrying out an activity in October, a month in which two important dates are also celebrated to raise awareness of this problem:
- World Day of Vision: October 11th
- World Day of the White Cane: October 15th
