Actress visits Belize Council for Visually Impaired

Actress Debra Winger is in Belize as part of her duties as Ambassador for “Sight Savers International.” As a partner and funding agency for the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired, “Sight Savers” is interested in the BCVI’s programmes and assistance to Belizeans of all ages. Today their ambassador met one of the BCVI’s most endearing children, Rowan Garel, at his elementary school in Belize City.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Six-year-old Rowan Garel, a student at Hummingbird Elementary School, looks like any other Infant One student, but since birth he has been unable to see.

Milagro Garel, Mother
?His condition is none as retinopathy of prematurity which is a condition that happened to him because prematurity and we are told because of oxygen and light.?

Milagro and Joe Garel became increasingly concerned because they did not know if they could get the medical care they desperately needed for their son in Belize.

Milagro Garel
?When we realised that Rowan was blind, we were thinking that we had to move from Belize because we had no idea what was available here.?

The Garel?s discovered that the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired offers an early intervention programme for children like young Rowan and it did not take long for them to contact BCVI. The programme has not only taught Rowan how to read and write but he has been successfully integrated in the general school system.

Milagro Garel
?There is nothing that the kids are learning in there, that he is not learning. He has a brailler that he uses for reading and for writing and Belize Council for the Visually Impaired has supplied us with all the material and moral support for Rowan to be in a normal school setting.?

BCVI?s Executive Director Joan Musa has worked tirelessly along with her staff to offer Belizeans both young and old comprehensive eye care.

Joan Musa, Executive Director, BCVI
?So we deal with rehabilitation and education of people who are irrevocably blind and then we also help people with eye care and surgery and the medical treatment for those who have the chance to regain their sight.?

No one knows this best than the Oscar-nominated actress Debra Winger. Winger is best known by Belizeans for her roles in the popular movies an ?Officer and a Gentleman? and ?Terms of Endearment?. Winger says when she was seventeen-years-old she learned what it would be like to be visually challenged after she was left temporarily blinded following an accident. Today she is not only an ambassador for Sight Savers International but is on her first working visit to Belize. Winger says just as it is important for the visually impaired to get the help they need, the community as well must be educated and know that they too not only have an important role to play but stand to benefit as well.

Debra Winger, Actress/Ambassador Sight Savers International
?For me, I got to a certain point in my life and I was so grateful for everything that happened to me and my instinct of reaction was to turn around and look back and say what can I do now. And I think that everyone has that in their heart if they listen. So this is a chance for people young and old. All these children are opening their hearts now.?

It was encouraging to see how the children interacted with Rowan. It?s that kind of approach that Winger says she found attractive about the way Sight Savers International conducts its programmes.

Debra Winger
?We don?t come in with a bunch of doctors and help with medicine and then leave. The whole idea is to have a community be apart, not only the visually challenged community and the blind community but the sighted community to understand that to include means to help everyone.?

BCVI produces Braille text for all their children in schools. Presently there are approximately fifty girls and boys that are enrolled in primary schools across the country. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.

Debra Winger will be in Belize for a week and heads out to the Orange Walk and Cayo Districts over the next several days.