New friends: The Al-Shurooq School for Blind Children

I recently visited the Al-Shurooq School for Blind Children in Beit Jala (next to Bethlehem), with Lydia and Crystal. It was great to hear about and see the work they do at the school. They currently have 26 students who live at the school during the week. The students go home on the weekend to be with their families. At a certain point they go home and are supposed to be "mainstreamed" into the regular school as well. The hope is that they will gain the skills needed to be independent during their time at the blind school and then actually be a help when they go home for good. Once at home, they get visits from the Al-Shurooq staff once a month to check up on their progress and see if they are losing their English (their lessons are in English and Arabic).

One essential thing the school does for those students who are mainstreamed is print and produce braille books for them. The librarian at the school takes the local curriculum and publishes them in braille. They showed us the computer and the big nosy printer that does the job. Its incredibly loud! We found out that one initial braille book cost $600 to produce (the school is funded by nice people in the US and Europe, especially the Church of Scotland).

On our tour of the classrooms we heard a few of them read out loud, one using a magnifier, and one who was completely blind read for us his book in braille. In two of the classes they wanted to sing for us so we heard, "We shall overcome" and then "If you are happy and you know it". I wish I had video for the first one. There was one student who carried the class through the whole song. It was beautiful. I did get a little bit of the second song. This time the singing was mainly from the tall boy in the middle who happened to be autistic as well. After singing he came right up to us and wanted to touch our hands.




"Touch" map of Israel and Palestine

I hope I can visit again soon!

Si recently made friends too. I don't let her play with them except with a glass between.

Bonus video: