Education for Blind Chinese Orphans

Love is Blind Project
Bethel’s six Chinese centers fall under our Love is Blind project umbrella. The centers currently provide care, specialized education, vocational training and medical services to 130 blind or visually impaired children (the majority of whom are orphans). The children's medical care includes annual health checks, optometry visits, dental care and surgery when needed . The Bethel School has pioneered a multidimensional curriculum that provides each child with their own Individualized Education Plan (IEP), which serves as a foundation for their critical early development. The school provides classes in English and Chinese Braille, conversational English and Chinese, Mathematics, science, computer technology, mobility skills, daily life skills, etc.

Love is Blind Graduation
This summer, a graduation ceremony was held to celebrate the successful graduation of Kindergarten students and their entry into the first grade of primary school.

U.S. Embassy Invitation
In our Beijing Center, Bethel students were recently invited to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. At the embassy, Bethel students participated in team and language strengthening Barrier Free Games.

Outreach Project
The project, now in its 12th year, uses research and data accumulated through the Love is Blind project to produce academic and medical materials that are exported to communities and networks in critical need of blind and visually impaired resources for high-risk children. To date, the project has conducted over 5,000 eye screenings, trained more than 200 institutions, established local community groups in rural provinces, and distributed thousands of copies of Bethel’s original curriculum (including Bethel’s manual, DVD series, and educational game). 

Children’s Day
On Children's Day, 100 families of visually impaired children across the country were presented with story books in Braille and Chinese characters.

International White Cane Day
On International White Cane Day, 66 families outside Beijing were presented with audio picture books and low vision story books suitable for visually impaired children.

Bethel Alumni
One of Bethel’s students who was adopted to the United Statues, Michael (Hongfa), has launched his own podcast. We’d like to support him and thought it would be great to end on his updated story:

"Hello, my name is Michael Munn, and my Chinese name is Hongfa. I am 22 years old, currently I live in this cool city in the state of Georgia called Atlanta. When I was 14 years old, an American family adopted me. I have been in U.S for eight years now. My hobbies are running, hosting my own podcast, playing musical Instruments, and watching documentaries. I ran three marine corps Marathons in the past. In addition to running, I also host my own podcast. I have a podcast called Michael’s Weekly Perspective. in this show, I talk about matters that are important for me during the week in the Blind Community. Beside the mentioned hobbies above, I am also able to play twelve musical Instruments. I can play Several Chinese Flutes, Percussion instruments, a little bit of Piano, and I am also able to play Western Flute and Piccolo.

Beside my hobbies, I was also continually active in my school before I graduated. While I was in high school, I am a member of my school’s drum line, a member of Track and Field Team and I was also a member of the student Council. Beside getting active in school, I am also involved with National federation of the Blind outside of school. The National Federation of the Blind is an organization that advocate for the needs of Blind peoples in United States. I was a first board member in the Student Branch within NFB Georgia Affiliate.

In May of this year, I graduated high school. Before I head off to college, I plan to go to a Training Center for the Blind in Minnesota for nine months to learn some more independent living skills. After I finish my training, I plan to go to the University of Minnesota. I want to major in Political Science and minor in U. S History. Once I graduate college, I want to go to Laws school.

Currently, I am working in this company called Techvision, and my job is to teach Blind students like me how to effectively utilize their assistive Technologies such as Screen readers on their computer and how to use it effectively with a Refreshable Braille Display."

You can find Michael's podcast using this link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLcMK9RZCUI_7aEmse_iIg

Thank you for your support of Bethel, your contributions directly support our children and have helped children like Michael! Any support helps in these financially unstable times. Thank you from all of us! 

Links:

• Learn more about Bethel here