JEDDAH, April 14: A new e-learning program for blind people called VRT will be announced at the annual general assembly of Ebsar Foundation in Jeddah on April 29.

The decision was taken on Sunday at Ebsar’s Executive Committee meeting chaired by Ahmad Muhammad Ali, president of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and head of the executive committee.

The committee reviewed preparations for the annual meeting, which will be attended, among others, by Ebsar’s President Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz.

VRT or Vision Rehabilitation Therapy is an online course teaching visually impaired people how to use computers. It is an interactive program with 20 segments and takes 10 months to two years to learn. Once completed, the course enables a person, regardless of whether they are visually impaired or not, to train others in the use of computers.

Mohammad Tawfiq Bellow, founder and general manager of the Jeddah-based Ebsar Foundation, said this program is the solution to the shortage of vision rehabilitation professionals in the Gulf region. It is available in both Arabic and English.

Ebsar is going to launch VRT with the collaboration of New York-based Light House International, a global organization dedicated to vision rehabilitation. According to Bellow, the training program will cover 22 Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) countries, which include Afghanistan and Pakistan besides Gulf countries. Six people have initially been selected for two-month training. Based on their feedback, the program will be formally launched, Bellow said.

Ebsar’s annual meeting will also hold a formal ceremony for the ongoing literacy drive for blind children. Bellow said his foundation also launched in January a campaign to fight poverty among blind people. It has selected four of its staff and 51 of the 1,111 people registered with Ebsar.

They are being provided with food baskets on a monthly basis. The basket, which costs SR150, consists of rice, tea, sugar, milk, oil, salt, flour, tomato paste, pasta, lentils and onions.

The program has been launched on the initiative of Prince Mishaal bin Majed, governor of Jeddah, who has urged all non-governmental organizations in Jeddah to fight poverty. His request came following the submission of a government-sponsored study, which revealed that a good number of Jeddah residents were facing a severe shortage of food and housing. Bellow said since Ebsar works for the betterment of visually impaired people, it looked into the condition of people registered with it for various programs.

It discovered that almost 80 percent of them were extremely poor with low income or no income at all. It selected 51 of them who have between them 300 dependents. Ebsar plans to extend the program that will cover up to 600 people by the end of the year. But, Bellow said, it will depend on the donations that it receives from businessmen and individual donors. So far 11 philanthropists, besides Ebsar’s own members and staff, have come forward for the program.

Source: http://arabnews.com