The trust was lovingly established in 2009 to meet a critical need for early intervention, care, education and support for visually impaired children and their care givers in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.
Our primary goal is to provide highly specialized and adapted intervention and foundational strategies to ensure the optimal and naturally healthy physical, cognitive and emotional development of visually impaired young children - all within a supportive and nurturing environment. The Trust serves as a source of comfort, support and vital information for families and caregivers while offering the best possible intervention and daily stimulation, adapted and specific to the needs of visually impaired children.
Our work is geared towards educating others and exciting the natural curiosity of visually impaired children. Encouraging the children to explore the world they live in confidently and competently so that they never grow to internalize their disability and fall behind the expected standard of their peers.
Over the last ten years we have proudly adapted and become more innovative in our approach to focus on the critical need for early intervention, care, education and support for the communities of our visually impaired beneficiaries.
We have evolved and developed projects that include addressing nutritional needs through our community kitchen and food parcel distribution, healthcare needs through our eye screenings and pediatric ophthalmology support project. The Trust is supporting early education through our ECD program and developing foundational math skills through Abagility Access. We recognize the need for community and sense of well being and strive to create supportive spaces where our beneficiaries can process their emotions through the Expressive Solutions Art project. Our Matriarch project provides a platform for mothers, caregivers and women to gather in solidarity. Our youngest project, Wakanda Girls focuses on developing changemakers in our local communities through restoring dignity and empowering conversation.
The stigma and stereotypes around children with disabilities need to be addressed, far too many visually impaired children receive help too late in their lives. Our experience has been that parents are not aware of how essential the early intervention services these little ones require are. We hope that by immersing ourselves within the communities we serve we can build relationships that will lead to earlier identification of children with vision loss. By educating the youth on the importance of early intervention we can create a cycle of early identification, care and in the long term reduce the number of individuals who permanent and debilitating vision loss.