Aman Organization launches 2nd festival for blind females

Written By: Basheer al-Selwi

Article Date: Aug 4, 2009 - 12:26:20 PM

Six-hundred disabled people marched together from al-Tahrir square to al-Sabeen square to raise awareness about their rights.

The Aman organization inaugurates its second festival for blind women in Yemen, which started on July 27, 2009 will go on until June 5, 2010. The Deputy Minister of Information , Ahmed Al-Homatee, attended the opening of the celebration and strongly requested Yemeni society to sympathize with the needs and expectations of the blind community and translate it into reality.

The minister described blind women as butterflies of heaven and exhorted all of Yemeni society to deal with and look at them with merciful eyes.

The head of the Aman Organization for Blind Families, Fatima al-Akel, expressed her gratitude to all businessmen for their constant help and support of blind women.

Furthermore, she emphasized the need of the society to hear the voice of handicapped women.

Leza al-Kore, the manager of media for the Aman Organization, talked about the importance of media in all its aspects including television, newspapers, internet, and radio in supporting and advocating the rights of disabled people in order to integrate them into the society as healthy individuals.

The festival, which is titled, “Our Rights: Between Reality and Inspiration,” started on Monday, July 27th with a workshop addressing the role of media in working towards solutions for the issues facing disabled people. Through the workshop, Abdua Shareem discussed local and international treaties and legislations which advocate for the rights of disabled people.

According to Smah Shahran, manager of public relations, summer centers are intended to introduce the organization and its services for blind women. She added that the organization is working according to the national and international laws and legislations which actually protect disabled people and their rights. We visited around 22 Centers in Sana’a so far.

Advocacy demonstration

Six hundred disabled people, representing many different disabilities, participated in an advocacy demonstration which started from al-Tahrir Square and ended at al-Sabeen Square.

In al-Sabeen Square, a number of plays were performed which aimed to increase awareness about the rights of the disabled and to educate people about the applicable laws and legislations that refer to disabled people.