“To build a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, there must be no disabled person left behind” said by President Xi Jinping. October 15 is the 38th International White Cane Safety Day with a theme of “New Journey and New Deeds”. When the festival is approaching, the School of Special Education held a grand celebration for the 38th International White Cane Safety Day and the launching ceremony of the second phase of the Growing TogetherCompetence Improvement Project for Visually Impaired Students, and brought teachers and students to experience the normal school life of visually impaired students through an innovative immersive way. Che Xianli, Secretary of CPC BMU Committee attended the Ceremony and delivered a speech.
Che Xianli first extended holiday greetings to all visually impaired students on behalf of CPC BMU Committee. He pointed out that since the launch of the first phase of “Growing Together” Competence Improvement Project for Visually Impaired Students, Binzhou Medical University (BMU), influenced by the idea of “equal participation, integration and sharing”, has continuously strengthened top-level design, deepened ideological guidance, improved education measures, and cultivated a group of outstanding visually impaired university students, including Feng hao and Mou Hongjiang. The Competence Improvement Project for visually impaired students is of great significance to help them improve overall competence, actively integrate into the society and pursue all-round development and can help to create a benevolent and inclusive campus cultural atmosphere of helping the disabled and the weak. He hoped that students would have courage to show their personal style and reap the joy of growth after participation. First, we must strengthen our conviction and strive for self-improvement. Be a model of holding firm conviction and making constant self-improvement, write the book of youth with responsibility and progress, and achieve great achievements when serving the country and society. Second, we must cherish opportunities, practice skills, raise high the sail of ideal, study hard and devoted and write a glorious chapter worthy of youth with struggling me. Third, we must strive to be first-class and make breakthroughs. We must work hard to interpret youth with responsibility and light up hope with ideals and struggle.
The launching ceremony began with a documentary, named My Life is Wonderful. The fresh and cheerful documentary realistically reflected the wonderful dribs and drabs and surprises of the campus life of the visually impaired university students since the first phase of the Competence Improvement Project was launched. It showed the striving spirit of hard work and persistence.
Daily life and learning and entertainment activities were well integrated into the specially designed “immersive experience”, which vividly displayed the different world of visually impaired university students. In the dark world, sound is no doubt the protagonist. In the “Use my voice to be your eyes” activity, Ms. Uzhina from the China Visually Impaired Information and Cultural Center was invited to interpret the highlights of the red movie “Revolutionary” affectionately and delicately. The wearing and body movements of the actors and the change of scenes in the story was lively reconstructed under the Vivid verbal description of Ms. Uzhina, showing the special charm of the barrier-free movie created by sound. Next, the visually impaired students led the teachers and students to immerse themselves in the experience of dark scene to feel the different unknown world in the dark. Teachers and students put hands on the shoulders of volunteer students, with complete trust, feeling the direction and bumps and smooth under feet and reaching out to feel the thickness and the front and back of clothes. Visually impaired students taught teachers and students to use Braille reading and writing hand by hand and practice listening, screen reading and retelling while holding the breath. They experienced threading and creation amidst doubts and wonders. They all sent out heartfelt admiration, for this way of learning they had never tried before and such huge difficulty of movement they had never met before!
At the ceremony, Cao Tongtao announced the Implementation Plan for the Second Phase of Growing TogetherCompetence Improvement Project for Visually Impaired Students by School of Special Education, and nearly 300 teachers and students participated in the experience activities. Through the experience, the hardships and difficulties of the visually impaired university students was deeply felt by teachers and students and they all expressed the willing to help the visually impaired students, through more caring, more understanding, more consideration and consciously maintaining of barrier-free facilities. We would like to create a new trend of helping disabled persons to make darkness bright and help the visually impaired persons to jointly create a bright future.
It is reported that the second phase of the “Growing Together” Competence Improvement Project for Visually Impaired Students continues the four levels of ideological growth, social integration, academic improvement, and quality expansion the first phase and adds a professional “Dark Running Team”, “Barrier-Free Movies”, “Directional Walking” and other dark experience projects. We fully support visually impaired university students to actively integrate into society and improve their overall competence. At the same time, it allows more healthy people to actively participate in the study and life of visually impaired university students. In the atmosphere of “equal participation, integration and sharing”, healthy and disabled university students achieve mutual assistance, mutual promotion and mutual advancement, laying a solid foundation for them to share the achievements of social spiritual civilization and material civilization, and strive to grow into a newcomer of the era who can bear the responsibilities of the Chinese nationality.
BY: Gong Xuemei
SOURCE: School of Special Education
