A new month brings a new KGUN 9 Giving Project nonprofit: SAAVI Services for the Blind
SAAVI stands for the Southern Arizona Association for the Visually Impaired. It started in Tucson in 1964, but it now covers the entire state of Arizona and beyond.
"We were actually founded by two blind sisters," said Amy Porterfield, SAAVI's president.
Porterfield knows well the history of the Southern Arizona Association for the Visually Impaired.
The sisters formed it as a social club.
"They developed a place where people could come together," Porterfield said.
61 years later, SAAVI Services for the Blind has grown into one of the nation's premier nonprofits serving blind children, adults and older adults.
"Over the years, we've added lots of different training opportunities," Porterfield said. "Now, we are primarily a training center, and we have a center here in Tucson and one in Phoenix. We serve people all over the country."
SAAVI has been pioneering a comprehensive, real-world training for the visually impaired.
"We focus on visual skills and we believe that by retraining your brain, retraining your body, you know that you can do anything non-visually that you can visually," Porterfield said. "It's just people have been programmed to do things completely visually. We feel like it makes people stronger and more confident in their skills."
People like Sirena Carroll, a student at SAAVI just a year ago, who has now moved on to teaching Braille to students enrolled in the program.
"SAAVI taught me that not only can I learn these skills, but how to be confident, how to be proud of who I am," Sirena said.
We're going to learn more about Sirena's remarkable journey later in the month.
If you'd like to help support SAAVI Services for the Blind, you can donate directly through their website.
Our partners in the Giving Project, the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, will again match the first $500 in donations.
