 It stands as a beacon of light for blind and low-vision persons in St. Lucia and has been in existence for 27 years. It has aided in the rehousing for a number of visually impaired persons and is highly involved in the prevention of blindness program in schools. This beacon of light, the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association, is today's success story. Well, the SMBWA is in fact the child on offspring of what used to be called the St. Lucia Committee for the Welfare of the Blind. That committee was set up in the 60s and in 1972 the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association was born and it is governed under the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association Act of No. 9 of 1972. And of course its main purpose is to do almost everything under the sun for blind and visually impaired people from education, rehabilitation, training to look after their general and other welfare needs. Children who are in the integrated setting are children who most of them can cook well with the sighting pays within the regular classroom setting. For these children we provide an itinerant service which means that we have specialist teachers at the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association who goes to the schools to situate that these children are coping well. As an itinerant teacher I visit the schools where our children are integrated and I deal mostly with the blind students. So I transcribe their braille material into print so that the regular classroom teacher can get access to reading what the child has produced. Braille is a system that the blind people use to communicate, to read and write. We say that braille is the key to independence for blind and low vision people. Braille consists of a system of six dots which are positioned differently to represent each letter of the alphabet. First we have to scan the text, then edit to make sure that whatever is in the text is what is that the scanner picked up and then run it through the embosser which is a braille machine to print out the braille. Through the process and the number of books that we have to produce and the equipment that we have to use we are never able to produce the books all of the children's text on time. So sometimes a year the school year has ended and we're still struggling for a few books so I think that will help. I think the service that I provide here, that we provide here as a unit is very crucial. If this unit was not providing any education for blind and visually impaired children it means that these kids would have to stay home. Part of the whole purpose of being here is to lobby for them to ensure that they have the basic human right for education like every other child. The children benefit because we are teaching one to one. It's a one to one individual attention. I'm teaching them that they can do it. Little things, little shapes, colors, the whole writing, arithmetic, language arts series we're teaching them that they can do it. They have the potential to do it, to perform, to achieve just like the normal children in the classroom. I think it is very important because if we don't provide these services our visually impaired children will be left out. They will be in a world all by themselves. But since we provide these services, they interact with others and they feel more accepted and wanted in society. People who never saw her, never knew she was blind and spoke to her on the phone could not detect any disability in the sense that Stacey would answer the phone and be very professional about what she does, would route her calls properly and the limited amount of things that she could do, she was able to do it very, very well and I was very satisfied with her performance. At first it was challenging but as time went by I got accustomed to it and I started enjoying it. The fact that you're blind does not prevent you from doing as well as everybody else. When I leave school I would like to go to college and I guess after I leave college I would like to get into journalism being a reporter, reading, announcing on the radio and so on and I also want to be a musician and all around the musician in singing and playing instruments. That's one of my dreams. We believe that people who are blind or visually impaired if given the opportunities which they deserve they should be able to live a life as normal as anybody else and they should be able to be contributing members of their society. I've been blind for 25 years and I was born out of it. I don't think that blind people should be pitied. I think that they should be given a chance because all a blind person doesn't have his sight but if you look at the blind person is capable of anybody else so if given the opportunity I think blind people out there can prove themselves. If I was blind I would feel I would be lonely I would not have friends to see. I couldn't watch television. The glasses make me see how to, how to see that. They make me see TV. They make me see radio and some things at my home. You have an eye screening done then you can indicate some children who may indeed need to have an eye test because they aren't seeing very well. Also when you're looking at a person you can look to see the health of their eyes. Are they shining? Are they clean? Are they red? Is there a squint? Are they rubbing their eyes a lot? There are so many signs and symptoms that you can look at even how a person walks indicates sometimes exactly how their peripheral vision is. I'd like to tell them that they don't have to look down on visually impaired people because they can do very well like they can and maybe sometimes they cannot do as well as they can but in order they have their own special way of doing things so they can do something that they themselves cannot do. Probably you know you need to get them to feel confident about yourself so in doing so getting more blind children in here you make them feel self-work sorry and make them feel that they could do anything that any normal person could set out to do. People have to try to change their attitude towards people with disabilities. They have to try to understand them and show her support. The Ministry serves as an umbrella that supports most of these NGO groups like the Blind Welfare Association in that they tend to provide for it assistance, technical, financial as the case may be. Annually we provide a subvention which assists the Blind Welfare Association in terms of its programming and perhaps payment of its staff if the case should arise. We facilitate in terms of the help in the sensitization program whenever they will have their fundraising activity and so forth. The Ministry also where it is possible and through international agencies would seek to provide a technical person or personnel as the case would arise for Blind Welfare Association. Yes, Inclusion Blind Welfare Association has been indeed one of the most dynamic organizations not only for the blind in the Caribbean but it can stand and be compared with many, many, many others in Inclusion in the Caribbean.