The blind leading the blind.

One of our guests this week on Outlook says: “That is like the best idea ever!”

On our first episode of October’s Blindness Awareness Month (or what we like to call BAM) we’re speaking with Alex Jurgensen and Jessica Gladysz from the Canadian Organization of the Blind and Deafblind (COBD) - Alex is director of operations and community engagement with the Camp Bowen Division and Jessica is Director of Programs and Student Affairs for the Pacific Training Centre Division and has been of the Camp Bowen Division in various roles.

Out on the west coast, a short 20 minute boat trip off west Vancouver there is an island, the home of a community of blind Canadians for over 100 years since the CNIB was there. They created a camp for blind children and Camp Bowen on Bowen Island is where many blind children, including our guests, met and discovered friendship and common ground. There, they weren’t isolated or blocked by barriers. Instead, they were welcomed and found out, many for the first time, that it was okay to be blind.

And on the show today, we learn about the history of Bowen Island and Camp Bowen and the impression it left on so many, about how the Pacific Training Centre for the Blind in Victoria and Camp Bowen (Camp Bowen Working Group) came together with their programs for teaching blind Canadians the skills they needed, in many cases for the first time, for success, and the kinds of programs offered as the Canadian Organization of the Blind and Deafblind was formed and is rapidly and over time expanding.

Now Camp Bowen and COBD offer summer camps, braille literacy camps for kids, and music camps for children and adults and provide a glamping situation, alongside activities such as horseback riding, swimming, boating, self-defense, boardgames, camp fires, and movie nights.

They have received federal funding for a 4-year plan, access to a beach front with 11 thousand square feet on 2 and a half acres, and will offer 8 camps in summer and are now running a 10-month intensive independent skills program (eventually for up to 38 people) where students are taught cane travel, braille instruction, assistive tech training, cooking and home skills, and employment preparedness.

We’re no longer being taken care of (by CNIB or others) - the program is Blind People In Charge and they really are, including (for the first time in Canada) the Deafblind community right there in COBD’s name. Blind and Deafblind Canadians have been a major part of Bowen Island for a century, a solid part of the culture, and have big plans for the future.

So check out everything they offer on their website, including 21 programs, (some virtual), a tech loan bank, and blind hub with lots of resources. Also consider making a donation if you have the means as these programs are all so important here in Canada and require funding to continue.

https://cobd.ca