Improved life for visually impaired

The Namibian Federation of the Visually Impaired (NFVI) is an umbrella organisation of regional associations and leagues for the visually impaired in Namibia. Mr Daniel Trum National Coordinator of the federation said that its centre is used mostly for rehabilitation training. During these training sessions, visually impaired people are trained to better cope with their disability and to live a normal life outside of the centre.
“We give four months training to twelve to fifteen individuals and we also have accommodation facilities that can house twelve people during this time”, said Trum adding that they teach their students braille, spatial orientation, mobilization, basic computer skills and entrepreneurship to name a few skills. They also visit their students’ homes to see under what conditions they live and to counsel and train their family members how to live with a visually impaired individual, said Trum.
Elaborating on their daily activities, he said they also print braille material of all the Namibian languages (but they are having difficulties with Damara/Nama), which they distribute across the country. They have trained 63 individuals so far this year and they will start in August with new trainees, he said. “We also partner with the University of Namibia, where they have a disability centre, where we help them with braille material and borrow them our machines if theirs are broken”, said Trum.

“After the students have completed their four months training and rehabilitation we provide them with assisting devices like walking sticks, telephones and computers that have voice-overs.  We urge the community, companies and NGO’s, please to fund us so that we can help and reach many more visually impaired individuals to better their lives” he concluded. The Namibian Federation of the Visually Impaired is an NGO register with the Ministry of Health and Social Service as a welfare organisation. NFVI has four regional associations, the Northern Association, the Central Association, the Southern Association and the North-Eastern Association and these four regional associations each have an office and a part-time coordinator of their own.