Goal of the event:
The goal of the event was to introduce Erasmus students and ESN members to what life was in Soviet Lithuania to a person who was visual impairment. Students will be able to write with braille machines and touch 'see' the art created by blind people. I wanted people to understand what a cruel place was the Soviet Union especially to people with disabilities.
Short description of the event:
As we start, our guest, in short, described what was a life as visually impaired person in the Soviet Union, how he struggled to get quality product whom he would be able to use. He described his life in the boarding school for kids with visual impairment. Then he narrates about his current life - his job in the library for blind people. Then he shows us how does the braille machine look like. We were given a paper with braille alphabet, and then we could write with that machine sentences like 'My name is ...' Later on, our guest showed us the books he learnt from when he was a small child. It was pictured with braille under those pictures, each of us was able to guess what object was we were touching while blind, it is a lot harder than you think. Then, we were given books from Germany, who were done by a different technique. That was it.
How did your event go?:
In my opinion, it went well - all student enjoyed it. We could improve by adding more activities because I saw that it was not so interesting when our guest just speaks about life in the past. I think, it would be much more enjoyable for everybody if we were doing more actual exercises.