Summer club for visually impaired to learn skills for life

The club, organized by Tamkeen, an initiative of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, will focus this year on teaching students IT and computer skills, as well as some life skills to increase their social awareness and help them integrate more easily into society.

It is being held at Tamkeen's head office in Dubai International Academic City.

The number of people enrolling for Tamkeen Summer Club increases each year, and the training courses have been improved to cater for the needs of the visually impaired.

The most popular programmes offered are an IT course, communication, orientation, and entertainment courses.

Awatif Akbari, Tamkeen's training manager, said that previous summer clubs were so successful that they had encouraged Tamkeen to put the club firmly on its annual agenda and hopefully enable it to grow.

Tamkeen has launched some new training programmes for the club.

The communication programme is designed to help young people fit into society more easily, and the orientation programme aims at giving students the skills to use transport and move around Dubai with confidence.

The main programme, the IT course, will enable students using computers to log on to the internet.

There is also an English language course to polish up linguistic skills.

Awatif added that it is important to provide the visually impaired with the necessary skills that will enable them to complete their education, especially in college as teaching at higher education level now depends so heavily on technology.

Therefore, she said, Tamkeen is keen to prepare students for using computers, a skill which Tamkeen rates as extremely important for helping the students to fulfill their ambitions.

She said Tamkeen has this year arranged with other summer activity centres so that students can integrate, which in itself will help in spreading awareness about the challenges faced by the visually impaired.

And, for the first time this year, Tamkeen has added entertainment and fun programmes to run parallel with the other programmes, to help students relax and enjoy their time after a long academic year.