ACCRA, GHANA -- Abigail Bentil, 25, is intent on proving to the world that disability is not the same as inability.
Bentil is a university graduate, a member of the Youth Advisory Panel for the United Nations Population Fund in Ghana. She is an executive member of KERAPA — a national youth and adolescent network for development in Ghana. She is also blind.
Bentil says she has dedicated her life to advocating for equal opportunities for the physically challenged people of Ghana.
Last month, she hosted a dinner in Accra where guests dined in total darkness. “People experienced blindness for a moment,” she says of the event which was the first of its kind to take place in Ghana. Guests experienced, “what it is like trying to take food into your mouth and have it fall down instead,” Bentil says.
The goal of the dinner was to raise awareness and funds to support the education of blind children in Ghana. Many blind children in Ghana, a relatively stable West African nation, do not have the opportunity to go to school.
The dinner, attended by 170 people who represented a number of companies in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, raised GHC 8,000, or $5,000 USD. Bentil says she expects another $1,000 USD to come in from pledges made at the event. The money will be “used to support the education of blind children in Ghana,” she says.
Journey to Activism
Bentil was not born blind. As a child, she says she loved catching birds and throwing stones. At age five, she was diagnosed with glaucoma. Over the next six years she underwent three eye surgeries to combat the disease without success. By age 11 she says she was completely blind from the glaucoma. Initially, Bentil says she was depressed and struggled, finding even the simplest task to be a challenge. “With time I got used to looking for things with my hands instead of my eyes,” she says.
The World Health Organization, WHO, estimates that there are about 1.4 million blind children worldwide and millions more who are visually impaired.
A report from VISION 2020, a joint program of the WHO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, indicated that every minute a child goes blind. The report adds that 90 percent of the world’s blind live in low-income countries. In Ghana alone, more than 220,000 people are blind. Worldwide, 90 percent of blind children do not receive formal education, leaving many of these children incapable of obtaining jobs and caring for themselves.
Dr. Oscar Debrah of the eye unit of Ghana Health Services estimates that there were 8,000 blind children in Accra alone. Many of Ghana’s blind do not have access to education and lack family support.
Two schools in Ghana, a country of 23 million, provide education and accommodations for blind children -- the Wa School for the Blind in the Upper West Region and the Akropong School for the Blind in the southern part of the country. But these institutions are seriously lacking in staff and resources.
A report from the Ghana News Agency describes the Akropong School for the Blind, a government funded institution, as a school that “is faced with a myriad of infrastructural, logistic, financial and personnel challenges.”
Bentil confirms that the school lacks nurses and adequate subject teachers.
For Bentil, her family’s insistence that she complete here education was the key to her success. But many blind children in Ghana are not so lucky, as abandonment is common. “Scores of blind children in Ghana are dumped at the Akropong School for the Blind by their families [who] never to come back for them just because they are blind,” Bentil says. “My family has been very supportive,” says Bentil. “My family never did anything to remind me that I am different.”