Spare a thought for the blind, pleads pastor
ABOUT 30 members of the Jamaica Society for the Blind (JSB) went to the Boulevard Baptist Church in Kingston yesterday morning to launch Sight Awareness Week and heard visiting pastor, Reverend Karl Henlin, encourage the congregation to be sensitive to the blind and their needs.
“Be accountable to each other, because we must become agents of God’s project for human transformation, wherever we are in life,” Rev Henlin said as he appealed to everyone to give their lives in the service of each other and not be selfish.
Henlin, the head of the Gregory Park Baptist Church, told the large congregation that as agents of God’s will “our lives must make a difference in enabling people to fulfil their highest human potential”.
Rev Devon Dick, Boulevard Baptist’s resident pastor, took the opportunity to present to the JSB library, a book of hymns published in Braille.
Jan Neish, chairman of the General Council of the JSB, accepted the gift on the behalf of the organisation.
Executive director of the JSB, Virginia Woods, elicited laughter in her short address when she jokingly reminded that the blind could stand too.
Her reference was to an earlier instruction for the JSB members to wave for acknowledgment, as opposed to an invitation to members of the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew to stand after they were introduced.
Woods read the JSB’s mission statement that identifies them as an advocacy group for blind adults.
She said the JSB, founded in 1954, existed to ensure the provision of services and access to resources that will enable blind and visually impaired persons to be included in the social, economic and political fabric of society.
In an interview with the Observer after the service, Woods said that the society was badly in need of field officers.
“We need funding for field officers to pay their salaries,” she said. “They are our main help to train and help the blind, especially the newly-blinded persons to adapt to society and adjust to blindness.”
Sight Awareness Week, which ends on June 21, is being observed under the theme: ‘Maintaining the vision, lighting the path’.
The programme of activities includes talks and vision screening, exhibitions, seminars and a symposium. On Friday, at the Sovereign Centre, Liguanea, Kingston, they will be staging a public awareness demonstration.