Italy
participants
- To raise awareness about disabilities, and to know how hard it is to be limited with the sight.
- Break stereotypes about blindness and experience first-hand having limitations with the eyesight.
First participants would talk about the expectations of the dinner where they would be blindfolded to experience blindness firsthand for at least an hour. Marialaura, a blind friend of one of the ESN volunteers, introduced herself and her dog talking about initial doubts that participants would have about blindness. Then we gave everyone some bands to be blindfolded while eating dinner. Being blindfolded, participants ordered the food and the beverages, and they started talking with their peers. At the end of the dinner we created a circle to talk about the experience and ask Marialaura doubts about her way of dealing with blindness.
There were a lot of questions towards Marialaura, which was the most important objective of the event. During the dinner, one table out of three began to have trouble being blindfolded because of how challenging the experience is. The event was the first of its type we had in the Knulp bar so this helped us to communicate better and come up with little things we could improve for the next event of this type there. Participants stayed until the end to hear about what Marialaura had to say with our doubts on blindness. We ended up loving this event and we will definitely repeat it because we realized that Erasmus students responded really good with this life changing experience.
