AlManarah initiates a new empowerment group in Shafa Amro 27/07/2010 05:45:32 AlManarah has just initiated a new empowerment group in Shafa Amro town near Haifa. This new group will meet in the local blind persons club. The group includes 15 blind adults from Shifa Amro and the surrounding villages. (ÇáãÒíÏ)

The group will meet every Monday for about three academic hours, for at least fifteen weeks.  The group meets thanks to the cooperation of the director of the local blind persons club in Shifa Amro social worker Nader Shihab, who welcomed the cooperation and promised to make visits to the group.

This group will be facilitated by social worker Mahmoud Khatib, who is himself blind, and has a Masters Degree in Clinical Social Work. Mahmoud said at the first meeting that “the participants will be exposed to several issues, starting with self-awareness, self-acceptance, developing self-confidence and positive attitudes towards others, coping with negative attitudes in society, coping with conflicts and emotional pressures, and many more, and ending by preparing the participants for the workforce”. The participants are blind and visually-impaired persons who belong to the home-bound community, and who spend most of their time helpless, and before the initiation of this empowerment group, had no framework for such activities.
Advocate Abbass says that AlManarah will continue its systematic empowerment program in order to lead more and more blind and visually-impaired people to a stronger position in their life. In order to do this, AlManarah will continue facilitating the current groups, and is planning to initiate more groups in additional locations in Israel.