Partner Feature- VRCBVI
Unlocking the outdoors takes confidence. As we learned from our partners at the Virginia Rehabilitation Center for the Blind and Vision Impaired, gaining confidence in the outdoors can have a huge impact on everyday life. In our latest partner features, we chat with Melody Roane the Director at VRCBVI about how white water rafting trips impart lessons of confidence and self-advocacy.
Beyond Boundaries started working with VRCBVI in 2016, after connecting with Shep and Kyle. The Virginia Rehabilitation Center for the Blind and Vision Impaired has a robust summer adventure program and wanted to add even more activities to its amazing program. The partnership with Beyond Boundaries was a perfect fit. Over the years, the relationship has blossomed into a special connection– benefiting blind and vision-impaired participants from all over the state.
“Beyond Boundaries has been an amazing partner,” says Melody Roane. “They really understand how to create programs that let individuals who are blind play an active role in the event.”
Our whitewater rafting trips have become a crowd favorite with the VRCBVI crew. “Our summer program has a focus on building confidence and the rafting trips have become a key component of that exercise,” says Roane.
Participants on our rafting trips are met with a lot of challenges. White water rafting can be intimidating and overwhelming for newbies. Through our partnership with VRCBVI, we’ve developed special training programs in which our white water guides are able to receive specific instructions on how to work with blind and vision-impaired participants while on and off the water.
“A lot of our participants are terrified of water and Beyond Boundaries really encourages them to face their fears. By the end of the trip, everyone is jumping and falling into the river for fun. Our participants really come away from the event feeling like they have control over the situation and many leave with a newfound sense of confidence and feel more empowered to take up hobbies in the outdoors,” says Roane.
Our unique combination of specialized outdoor skill sets and experience with working with groups of all abilities has become especially important to VRCBVI and its programming. We want their participants to leave our trips feeling empowered, engaged, and excited.
“The Beyond Boundaries group works hard to make our participants feel included. They don’t just take people for a passive boat ride, they build the confidence for them to learn to participate alongside their sighted peers,” Roane explains.
We can certainly say that we love getting on the water with the VRCBVI crew and hearing that we’ve had such an impact on their participants makes the rafting time feel that much better.
Learn more about our programming here. Donate here or volunteer here.