Beyond senses

27th of June is the worldwide celebration day of Helen Keller when people from all around the world organize different activities with the aim to raise awareness around deafblindness and defend the rights of people with deafblindness.

This year we organized the event ”Beyond senses” together with our friends from AMAis – an event where participants could experiment the sensory tent, the tactile maps and to participate to mobility and orientation walks in the absence of sight and hearing.

Helen Keller is also celebrated within the special schools we are working with through different creative activities dedicated to children with deafblindness. This year 17 special schools from all around the country were involved and more than 700 children with deafblindness/multisensory impairments, together with children from conventional schools took part of creative workshops, interacted between them through games and exercises, participated to trips, practiced climbing and learned about the life story of Helen Keller.

The ones who took part to the event and experimented the sensory tent, tried to understand the space through tactile maps and participated to mobility and orientation walks without seeing or hearing were truly impressed and some of their reactions can be read in the testimonials bellow:

”Congratulations on your initiative of bringing “normal” people into another “normal” reality. Thank you for your efforts to open the eyes of people who live in a comfortable unconsciousness. I am really happy I met you and that you are trying to change rigid mentalities.” – Raluca, participant.

”To me, this exercise meant leaving my comfort zone. Lacking some senses leads to the inevitable heightening of others. It is hard, it is difficult, it is almost impossible to move on after losing one of your senses, but on the other hand you begin seeing the world with “different eyes”. Congratulations for all your hard work and I wish you the strength to carry on!” – Iulia, swimmer for Sense International Romania at Swimathon.

We thank all those who came to perceive the world beyond senses!