Seeing through their eyes

I've had the most touching experience yesterday with the students of Ramon Magsaysay Elementary School-Special Education Division in Digos City. I met Kakits, a visually ipaired seven year-old student. Litterally, she is blind since birth, and Stephanie who is also suffering blurred vission. Kakits is a little shy. But you can feel her passion to learn. She said, she wants to become a teacher someday. If she is deprived with the gift of sight, she also has a voice of a siren. She offered us a song before we left. Stephanie is friendly and polite.

Stpehanie and kakits are just two of more than four thousand visually impaired students in the Philippines. According to the Department of Education, this number is both bad and good. It is alarming to note that more and more children are born with vission problem while the record also shows a great interest among parents and children to go to school. Deped is focusing on this interest to give the special students with brighter future. On Sunday, DepEd and the Resources for the Blind conducted a symposium seminar on how to improve the services on special education. During the symposium, most of the teachers handling the special children stressed on the lack of funds for materials such as braille and reading materials. With the symposium, these problems are aimed to be answered.