#GoodNews: First Braille Library Opens in Guwahati With 200 Books

The principal of Guwahati Blind High School hopes to get 500 books for the students in the coming months.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter @guwahatiplus)

The first library for visually-impaired students was set up in Guwahati at the Blind High School on Wednesday.

The library offers the braille versions of a variety of academic books and journals, self-help, general knowledge books, which students otherwise find hard to procure, as reported by The Tribune.

4 January is observed as World Braille Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of Louis Braille, the inventor of braille.

The initiative was undertaken by Amway Opportunity Foundation (AOF), the CSR initiative of Amway India, in partnership with the school and the library houses 200 books currently.

We started off with around 200 books, including a few educational magazines and all the text books of courses. Our aim is to have at least 500 books by the end of this year.

Bhaben Burman, Principal

The library was inaugurated by Kamrup Deputy Commissioner M Angamuthu.

AOF has also provided us with a librarian and has promised to give Rs 6,000 every month to run it. Now the students can enhance their knowledge.

M Angamuthu

GS Cheema, the senior vice-president of Amway India said that the company’s aim was to open 31 such libraries in India over the next few months.

At least four of these will be in the Northeast. We will be setting up one at Bethani Society in Shillong while we are trying to partner with other NGOs to establish one in Mizoram and another in Tripura.

According to the Health Ministry report of 2008, Assam, with 15.6 lakh people (4 per cent of the population) visually-impaired persons, has the highest numbers of visually-disadvantaged people in India.

(Source: The Tribune)