Santo Domingo.-Transcoridos almost 13 years since the “life made a bad play” upon receiving a shot in the eyes by a man who fled after committing an assault, Francina Hungary became a symbol of “resilience”, after creating, a year later, the foundation that bears his name and assuming the defense of the rights of the non -seers.
Being a professional of the architecture and descendant of a well -off family, she together with José Beltrán, today president of the Francina Foundation, who also lost his vision, but at 13 years of age, they have the difficulties with which people must deal with these conditions.
Beltrán, son of two masters from Monte Plata with economic limitations, received with effort the support of these to get ahead.
Both undress the adversities they had to face separately until they become autonomous people from their life experiences. By participating in the lunch of the Corripio Communications Group with Camila Paya, project coordinator, they revealed part of the challenges they had to face.
In the case of Francina, from the fact that her parents left her to speak, because although they are part of her support circle, they believed her unable to move on or hid the cane because they did not want to see her like that.
“It was terribly painful, there was a lot of suffering around me, and in some moments I wish I was not alive, I did not want to live that, but when someone told me: ‘They are going to train you to use the cane as a blind person, just in case, until you recover their sight.
I saw an exit window to the circle of suffering and discovered since the first week that it was not so bad to be blind … Ja, ha … with artificial intelligence and the internet, I changed the prospects of seeing things, ”said Francina, who specified that more than 12 % of the Dominican population has some disability, according to statistics.
He commented that the circumstance empowered her and discovered that within the condition she did not have to stop doing what she was doing.
Hence he trained in a center in Miami and realized that the country was light years away, that just some people knew adaptive technology. Since then it found resilience and it was something that occurred on the road, and everyone can develop it to the extent that it has had.
Beltrán remembers that when his parents were small, each RD $ 3,000 charged and he was in the basic school, but he had to travel twice a week to the Blind School.
“Each trip for my parents cost RD $ 400. If we came twice a week we represented eight hundred. It was a subject of borrowing. The way of study was with a computer; my dad could not buy it, then I recorded the classes … I studied with a scholarship, which means that I did not have all the instruments. So there is a very large difference when you have the tools,” Beltrán said.
Social work
Following these experiences, they have motivated themselves to contribute to people overcome by these barriers, stigmatism and family determination to create in the ability to develop competition, in the case of children who were born with a certain disability.
They are still counteracting the lack of information and access to services to handle not only visual limitations, but physics.
Barriers
In addition to the barriers with which they have to deal, such as the obstacle of waste on public roads; the problem of drains that put them at risk, especially on rainy days; the electric laying cables; The lack of services and citizen insecurity, Francina cites that in principle one of the barriers is for parents to set aside skepticism and convince themselves that it is worth believing in the opportunities and progress that their children can access.
In the group of no seers in the country, 398,594 are recorded that face Obstacles that go far beyond lack of vision, but also cultural barriers, social prejudices, insecure urban spaces and, in many cases, labor exclusion.
Beltrán and Francina cited, among other obstacles, that the areas with the greatest difficulties in accessing are rural, where there is more poverty, and vulnerable urban areas, where there is greater overcrowding, such as Villa Mella or Cienfuegos, in Santiago.
Congress
– White cane
By International White cane day, on October 15, they promote value of that instrument in the non -seers.
In Urban Accessibility Congress they will play the impact of waste management on equal access in cities.
