[Trainer-talk] Producing the first daisy books at UCC Ghana

[Julius Braimah]

Hi Friends,

Good Morning from Julius in Kerala India.
I am extremely greatful to share with you an initiative or my vision
to produce daisy books for the visually impaired people before I
return to Ghana on the 15, December 2009.
As you may be aware, our program at the International Institute for
Social Entreprenuers is slowly coming to an end.
During my one year studies in India, I have found daisy books as very
useful learning material for visually impaired students in any
accademic institution.

I am currently the adaptive computer instructor for the visually
impaired students at the university of Cape Coast Ghana. We currently
have 40 visually impaired students pursuing various programmes at this
 university.
  At the university of Cape Coast where I work, we have basic
infrastructure like ferniture, Rooms, electricity,  eight permanent
staff, 10 computers and internet service. These basic materials could
enable us start our daisy production in the future.

I would like to provide you with some background information about
some problems faced by visually impaired persons in Ghana.

In Ghana, We have three universities which admit visually impaired
students to pursue their four years degree program. These includes the
university of Legon, University of Winiba and the University of Cape
Coast.
In addition, there are four senior high schools and training colleges
in Ghana which intigrates visually impaired students to study in this
institutions.

    We have two main blind schools which admits blind and partially
sighted persons to acquire primary education and prepare these
students to be intigrated in to the senior high schools.

I can clearly confirm to you that, non of these learning institutions
have daisy books for visually impaired students to use. These students
rely mostly on their sighted friends to either record on tapes or read
their text books for them.
 The problems associated with this recordings are that, the tapes do
not last much longer, you can loose them at any time and it is very
difficult to have some words spell out for them.

This is the very reason why I would like to bring to your notice the
establishment of daisy book production to solve common problems faced
by visually impaired persons in their studies. I should also admit
that, I learnt about daisy books during my one year studies in Kerala
India.
I discussed this program with the chief Librarian of our university
Mr. Clement Mensah. We have both developed a project proposal and a
budget to start the production of Daisy books in our library June
2010.

Since this program is the first of its kind to be set up in Ghana and
in the whole of West Africa. We will require a lot of effort, funds,
resources, software, materials,   and training workshop to help us set
up and produce these daisy books for the visually impaired students of
the University of Cape Coast Ghana in June 2010.

 I would therefore like to make this initiative known to all of you on
this network. We will collabarate with any one of you who will be
interested  to assist us to start the production of daisy books for
visually impaired persons in the university of Cape Coast Ghana.
Wishing you all the best.

With lot of love,
-- 
Julius Kwasi Braimah
Computer Instructor.
University of Cape Coast
Ghana West Africa.
<julius.vision at gmail.com>
<julius.training at gmail.com>
<www.juliusvision.com