Belgium
participants
The goal of the activity was to raise awareness about international mobility for people with visual impairment / visual disabilities.
The 4th of December, a group of local and international students arrive to L'italiano, an italian restaurant in the city center of Brussels.
They enter the place and they are immediately asked to put a blindfolds. A volunteer arrives, introduce themselves and ask the student to follow them. They go upstairs - however, the task seems more complicated than thought. It takes time and it might be scary. But that's why our volunteer is next to them, explaining everything and guiding them to the table.
The students arrive to a long table, they are introduced to the people already sitting there and have some chat. Once everyone has arrived, we explain the rules and the programme of the event.
Food and drinks arrive on the table and the difficult part begins. How to do it? We have a secret guest in the crowd how will give tips on how to manage to find their food on the plate. The volunteers will guide verbally.
Between dishes, we play games and they have time to discuss.
After the dessert, our secret guest stands up. He explains his Erasmus experience in Murcia and all the difficulties and anecdotes he had during that time. Wassime is Belgian. He was on Erasmus with an internship, promoting international mobility in schools and universities. He is also blind since birth.
After his speech, students ask questions. A lot of them. We end the event by finishing the dessert and sharing some stories.
The students showed a lot of interest about Wassime' story.
The Braille ligue asbl, the national organization who worked with us was delighted to join us and promised to join the activity in the next SID edition.