FOX 11 LA - Van Nuys School For The Blind Needs Your Help
FOX 11 News video report.
<--please Click to see the story on the FOX 11 website ) Reporter: Susan Hirasuna May 17 and May 21, 2011
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LA Daily News - Lack of funding may spell end of classes for visually impaired
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by Bob Strauss, Staff Writer Posted: 04/25/2011 05:36:06 PM PDT
VAN NUYS: Lack of funding may shut down campus for visually impaired.
Sarah Greenseid contentedly worked her yarn on a recent morning, her perpetual smile not entirely masking the anxiety felt by the visually impaired 99-year-old.
"It's really too bad, the possibility of the school not continuing," Greenseid said during a textile arts class at the Van Nuys School for the Blind, located in a rented classroom behind St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. "It's a very important part of everyone's life to have a place to come to where we can share our same problems, interact and still have a class.
"I will be sad if it doesn't continue."
As the Daily News reported in 2010, the school, also known as
Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley, is in a month-to-month struggle to keep offering the two classes it's managed to sustain this year. If the money isn't raised to cover classroom rental, the 39-year-old operation will have to close on May 19.
The main reason for the school's dire financial straits is the loss of its annual $75,000 Los Angeles Community Development Department grant, due to budget cutbacks and a restructuring of the agency's qualification criteria.
Fundraising campaigns have kept the school going, and there are last-ditch efforts to stave off closure.
Ophthalmologists Kerry Assil and Thomas Tooma have each donated $6,000 Lasik surgeries to be raffled off for the benefit of Retinitis Pigmentosa International, the school's parent organization, named for a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness.
Each $25 donated will earn an entry in the raffle. Other details are at
www.rpinternational.org.
"We hope that the donation from NVision Laser Eye Centers will help RPI reach its financial goals to help save the Van Nuys School for the Blind because its program provides training for the social, emotional and physical implications related to losing one's vision," Tooma said in an emailed statement.
"It is their lifeline to the light," Tooma continued. "Without that school, they are in the dark. That darkness is interrupted for at least 48 hours during the week when they go to the school. It also provides them lunch and they are even sent home with food."
Back at the St. Andrew's campus, close to a dozen visually impaired people were diligently making their rugs, mufflers and caps.
"I've been coming here for nine years; I also go to ceramics on Monday," said Patricia O'Connor of West Hills, who was creating a colorful wall hanging. "It's almost like a family to us, we've been meeting here for so long and we enjoy it so much.
"It gives people who have vision problems something really worthwhile to do, and we can see the benefits of our own work."
The school's search for a less-expensive venue has, so far, proven fruitless. The church is not unsympathetic, but has its own funding needs and rents out its campus to other organizations, including a Montessori preschool, to make ends meet.
"Our people are low-vision and many of them completely blind, so it's tricky to find another place for them," noted Laura Carlone, the school's site coordinator. "Here we have access to a kitchen and the run of the place, along with the preschool."
For Greenseid, who began volunteering at the school 29 years ago and became a student when her eyesight started to fail, the weekly class has become an important part of her independent existence.
"It keeps me busy," the Sherman Oaks nonagenarian said. "I do my own cooking, bookkeeping, banking and some shopping. My lifestyle is dependent on doing as much as I can as often as I can. Coming here is one of my very high priorities.
"Every day that I come here is important," Greenseid added. "I relate to the students and it's very rewarding. It's a way from them to get out of their homes."
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LA Daily News: Donations help keep School for Blind open NONPROFIT: Classes for seeing-impaired will last at least through January. By Bob Strauss, Staff WriterPosted: 12/30/2010 09:19:04 PM PSTThe Van Nuys School for the Blind, which was in danger of shutting down after Friday because of a funding shortage, will stay open for at least another month.
Although the 38-year-old school, which provides mobility and other crucial classes for seeing-impaired people, had not reached its year-end fundraising goal of $75,000 as of Thursday, it had received enough donations to pay the $2,000 rent on its Sherman Way facility through the end of January.
"I wish it was $75,000 and we could keep all of our programs in there, but we've got to keep going," said Helen Harris, president of the school and head of the nonprofit RP International, which is coordinating the fundraising drive. "We're going to have to cut the mobility classes - probably in half, rather than altogether - next month."
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KABC-TV: Van Nuys School for Blind needs donations Van Nuys School for Blind needs donationsDecember 24, 2010
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A local school for the blind is making a desperate plea for donations.The Van Nuys School for the Blind needs $75,000 by New Year's Eve or it might have to close its doors. Founder Helen Harris, who is legally blind herself, says the school is a crucial resource for those with degenerative eye disease. Harris says public funding has dried up and donations have plunged more than 50 percent.
"And that affects us in two ways, with our medical research for RP, and for day-to-day school that we have for the blind. It's going to close," said Harris.
The school is launching a last-ditch fundraising campaign this weekend.
(Copyright ©2010 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7863232---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LA Daily News: Fundraising campaign eyes $75K for survival of Van Nuys School for the Blind FACING CLOSURE - Fundraising campaign eyes $75K for survival of Van Nuys School for the Blind By Bob Strauss, Staff WriterPosted: 12/22/2010 07:50:11 PM PSTThe Van Nuys School for the Blind may be facing its end. But the folks who run the facility - which provides classes, assistance and, perhaps most crucially, a social outlet for the city's visually impaired and others in need - won't be going down without a fight.
The school, also known as the Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley program, will launch a campaign this weekend in the hope of raising $75,000 to keep its doors open past Dec. 31.
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