helping blind in Russia

[Harris]

Svetlana and I are the only project in America helping blind students in Russia--we are sending folding canes, voice recorders, used computers, magnifiers, & toys to first-degree and second-degree invalids. We need help--can you take some things when you go to Piter or Moscow (or Novosibirsk or Essentuki)? Canes cost $30 each--they are graphite reflecting canes. Svetlana's father was blind professor at SPbU for 57 years. She works at MIT. Harris Sussman
mnadamovfund.org

[Boris]

Harris sent me this e-mail today. We have to help.


Svetlana and I might be the largest unofficial providers of canes for blind people in Russia. If so, that's only because a few people have been willing to put some folding white canes in their suitcase when they go to St. Petersburg or Moscow from Boston. Other people have declined to take any canes (or a voice recorder for a blind student) because they were nervous about taking something through security and customs. A local college student was going to take a cane when he went to study for the summer until his parents forbid him to do it. On the other hand, a whole class of Dartmouth students each took a toy for a blind child.

Svetlana grew up in St. Petersburg where we met when I spoke at a conference on conflict resolution at an old resort on the Gulf of Finland and she was an interpreter for the visiting Americans. Her father was a distinguished professor of physics at Leningrad-then-St.Petersburg State University. He was totally blind from the age of 2. After he died in 2005 we thought we might help talented blind students in his spirit. We didn't realize that social services to people with disabilities were being phased out. We didn't know how hostile the government was to international assistance as reflected in the notorious 2006 NGO law. We have met almost a hundred blind people in St. Petersburg and we work closely with programs that serve about a thousand people out of the 5000 blind and 6000 vision-impaired people in the city (first-degree and second-degree invalids). We have been helping a typhlopedagogue who majored in defectology and teaches blind children, but she didn't want the principal of her school to know about us because she was afraid the principal would confiscate the learning materials and supplies we helped her buy for her classroom. It seems there's worry enough on both sides. Svetlana works at MIT where she is an administrator at the Sloan School of Management. When a computer is beyond its warranty and is taken out of service, they give it to her. We have taken or sent about 30 computers for blind people to use. We consider someone who takes a laptop computer in his suitcase a Hero of the People.

A cane is not quite a magic carpet but it does make a huge difference in giving a blind person the ability to move about. In Russia canes are free but it can take a year to get one, after submitting to the required redundant approvals and having to travel to various reviews. We buy graphite reflective canes. The Russian canes are not graphite or reflective. And we give canes that are each the custom length for the person who will use it. In Russia you get the same length as everyone else. Each folding cane weighs about 7 ounces and is about the size of the tube inside a roll of paper towels. We put them in a plastic bag and ask a traveler to take them wherever they're going in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Nobody has ever had any problem. (Nobody has ever had a problem taking anything else either.) We have plenty of people ready to pick them up and deliver them to the blind person whose name we write on each cane. We just got an email with the names of another 31 people who would like a cane. With some help, they should soon be on their way...

Harris Sussman
July 12, 2008
http://mnadamovfund.org/