Success stories about RNZFB volunteers
Volunteers are vital to the organisation and offer a considerable amount of time and energy to the RNZFB and its members. Here you can read about some of our amazing volunteers.
Mike Walker
Mike Walker didn't discover Foundation summer camps until he was almost 14, which is usually the upper age limit for attendance. He was delighted, therefore, to be asked to become a camp junior leader and extend his involvement.
Having a vision impairment himself gave Mike the edge on being both sympathetic and knowledgeable. "I know what to look out for with hazards and judging heights, and I can understand people's personal needs," he says.
Mike has been a leader for three summer camps in the North Island, held each year between Taupo and Turangi. Meeting others who have a vision impairment and are getting on with their lives has been an inspiration. The camp experience of working with children has also encouraged him to make an entirely different career choice. He is now in his second year of training to be a teacher.
Weili Wong
As a recent immigrant, Weili Wong approached Volunteering Waikato to find out how he could best put his skills to use as a volunteer. Before emigrating and coming to Hamilton three years ago, Weili had been the director of a physics laboratory in the Chinese province of Shandong.
The Foundation was one of two organisations nominated by Volunteering Waikato, and for Weili repairing talking book machines is child's play.
"They need my work and I'm glad I can do something useful," he says. "The people are very nice. I hope I can do more."
Each Friday afternoon he calls into the Hamilton office to see what machines are awaiting his expert touch.
Weili and his wife Jihong Chen have just received their permanent residency. Weili has also been studying at Waikato University so he can once again practise his greatest passion, which is to do research work in a physics lab and teach science education. However, that won't stop him from continuing to volunteer.
Moya Badham, QSM
"I've never thought of what I do as being a volunteer," says Moya Badham. "It's more a sense I have of joining in." Moya was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for her public service work in the Waikato area. Moya has been active in the DPA National Assembly for People with Disabilities, the Māori Women's Welfare League and the Order of St John, as well as the Foundation.
Articulate and talented, she believes that public awareness is the key to transforming the isolation experienced by many people with sight loss.
"I'm interested in making the public aware, not in charity. The fact that you can't see doesn't take away from being a person in your own right.
"Isolation is a big issue. I'm antagonistic towards those who leave people out. We've got to go more than halfway towards people who are isolated.
"Taking that first step is the hardest. It helps to have your hand held at that time, don't you think? I try to let people know that you can get help, and what's available."
Moya understands social isolation from her childhood experiences with glaucoma. Three weeks after she was born, she was hospitalised for eye operations, and is still having operations as her vision fluctuates from being able to differentiate between light and dark and being totally blind.
As a child, Moya went to a mainstream school, where she often felt sidelined from activities and schoolmates. Moya was then denied the opportunity to work for a teaching diploma because of her degenerative eye condition.
Now in her 80s, Moya came to New Zealand in 1945 as a 21-year-old war bride. Her husband was serving in the navy. She became a member of the Foundation in 1963, and in 1965 became a school librarian. This work fed a lifelong interest in the education of blind and vision-impaired children.
Moya also lobbies local councils about environmental access issues and has no intention of letting age become another barrier to participation in life or from speaking up about what's important to her. Moya's not one to rest on her laurels and will continue to advocate for people in the Waikato region.
Sara Ash
"It's been my way of going out and saying thank you," says Sara Ash of her experience speaking to schools and organisations about the work of the Foundation.
Sara began volunteering in the Foundation's Tauranga office after she left her job in a commercial kitchen. Her eyesight was deteriorating due to Retinitis Pigmentosa.
Aged 31, she wanted to get back into work again, but having only worked in kitchens or as a nurse aide, it was difficult to answer the oft-asked question, "What do you want to do?"
"You don't know any more what you're capable of," she says, "or what the possibilities are without sight."
Sara initially spent two days a week at the Foundation answering the phones and filling out taxi vouchers. She graduated to helping with appeals by coordinating the fundraising volunteers.
"There's no way I could have taken on an office job initially. It would have been too daunting," she says. "But Liz and Karen (office staff) really supported me and helped me develop."
Sara travels around Tauranga independently with her guide dog Destiny to speak about the journey of adjusting to sight loss in a sighted world.
"I tell kids in schools that no question about blindness is too silly. Speaking is a nice way to educate people and I've learnt that everybody struggles with something. You can get stuck in your own blind world, so it's a wonderful chance to keep looking outward."
Sara has gone back to school, learning braille and studying at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. She saved up for a computer, received a Pearson Fund grant for JAWS software and was matched with guide dog Destiny. The polytechnic employed reader/writers as support and this year awarded her an Outstanding Adult Learner Award.
"I've gradually learned that it's OK to be vision impaired,” says Sara. “Every day I get a step closer to doing what I want to be doing, which is working with people."
Sara would like to continue her voluntary work after she gets a paid job. "It's really rewarding and you learn so much," she says.