Akron Blind Center to use Millennium Fund grant to provide supplies for backpack program

The Akron Blind Center doesn’t call the people it serves blind.

They’re visually challenged.

“We use the words ‘visually challenged’ to define people as having a challenge that they overcome on a daily basis. It's not a barrier that prevents anything,” said Akron Blind Center Executive Director Scott Reisberg. “They are a person that happens to have a situation going on, a challenge that they have to overcome. And that's a very important mindset, especially for children to grasp early.”

The Akron Blind Center was recently named one of 33 organizations awarded a total of $55,000 in grants through the Millennium Fund for Children, a partnership of the Akron Beacon Journal and the Akron Community Foundation. Since the Millennium Fund launched in 1999, it has distributed nearly $950,000 in grants to local groups that benefit children in the region.

The center plans to use the funding from the Millennium Fund for supplies for its backpack program.

Reisberg said the backpacks, which cost more than $100 each to put together, are important for children with visual challenges because they need specialty supplies, like a tactile writing device that creates raised lines and paper with raised lines.

“It doesn't do you a whole lot of good to have crayons or colored pencils if you don't know what the colors are,” he said. “We take great care to celebrate their differences instead of making them feel awkward or uncomfortable because they have something in life that they are differently overcoming.”

Reisberg noted it also helps parents with what can be a financial burden. The center also has a scholarship program for incoming college students, another way to help offset financial needs.

The membership-based nonprofit organization, which has an annual budget of about $150,000, was created in 1913 as the Summit County Society of the Blind. It became the Akron Blind Center and Workshop in 1948 and later became the Akron Blind Center.

The center isn’t state or federally funded and operates almost entirely by trusts and donations from individuals and foundations, according to its website.

The center is currently working with about 100 people, ranging in age from about 6 to 96, in a multi-county area. Reisberg, who’s been the executive director for seven years, said the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially challenging, as people with visual challenges “are very tactile in nature.”

“It becomes extremely difficult or impossible to social distance if you can't see someone else to social distance,” he said. “In doing things, they have to orient themselves … so there's a lot of other considerations that the visually challenged have that others don't.”

The center, whose motto is “We can and we will!” offers an array of day classes for adults, with about 20 sessions a week, and children’s programs, including the backpack program, a camp, a Braille summer bridge program and a social program “to just lets kids be kids and be with other kids of the same kind of challenges," Reisberg said.

“That's so important for a child who might be the only one at their school or in their district who has a visual challenge,” Reisberg said. “They then know that there are others out there.”

The program also allows parents to network with and support each other so they too “know they're not alone," he said.

In addition, the center has a mentoring program for people with visual challenges to mentor others with visual challenges.

“Think about the power of being able to look up to someone who's already been through what you've been through and can kind of lead you along and help you out and give you encouragement and tell you here's how you can do stuff,” Reisberg said.

One of the center’s annual fundraisers is the White Cane Experience, in which sighted people are blindfolded and guided by people with visual challenges.

The center has a small store with items for the visually impaired, like talking alarm clocks, magnifiers and a cup alarm, which people put on the edge of their cup so they know when it’s full without having to put their finger in a hot or cold drink.

The center is located at 325 E. Market St., Akron. Those interested in connecting with services can call the center at 330-253-2555 or visit akronblindcenter.org.

“A lot of times people are told what they can't or they shouldn't do because of their visual challenge,” Reisberg said. “You wouldn't believe what someone can do if they put their mind to it.”

Contact Beacon Journal reporter Emily Mills at emills@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter @EmilyMills818.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Blind Center helps visually challenged, celebrates differences