#BigFavour: KZN individuals help change visually-impaired boy's life
Parents, how often do your children complain about doing homework? Meet Keith, a ten-year-old boy that longs to complete his homework just like all the other kids. The Big Favour helped him see through the darkness.
Take a listen to how it all happened in this very moving podcast, and then read the blog below.
Keith is a brave little ten-year-old boy who lives with his dad and sister in Pinetown. Keith's dad, Malcolm, is a single parent and works full time.
Keith has Cone Dystrophy, an eye disorder that affects the cone cells of the retina, so he currently has about 10% peripheral vision at the bottom of his eyes, which means to see anything, he has to look up to see in front of him.
When it starts getting dark, Keith has no vision at all.
Keith attends the Open Air School in Durban where he uses a brailler – a braille typewriter with a key corresponding to each of the six dots of the braille code, a space key, a backspace key, and a line space key.
Once school is over, though, homework is a problem and, without his brailler, Keith is unable to do anything outside of school hours. Malcolm told me that things are hard and buying his son his brailler is not possible as it is expensive.
Read - #BigFavour: Albina is grateful to see the sun again
A few months back, I received a mail from Sivan Pather who mentioned that he and his wife Lorraine, together with his 12-year-old daughter Delia, wanted to help on the Big Favour and donate money to someone deserving. Delia also wanted to donate her pocket money to help someone.
I’d also had a mail from Sebastien Lamarque. He is a 17-year-old Grade 11 student at Crawford College, La Lucia. Sebastien wrote to me saying that he had so much to be grateful for, and after hearing so many people in need on the Big Favour, he also wanted to donate R4,000 of his own pocket money.
Sivan, Lorraine, and Delia Pather, together with Sebastien, have done the most incredible thing and changed Keith's life. Putting all their money together, they’ve bought him his very own brailler.
Read: The gift of clothing thanks to the Big Favour
Thank you to these wonderful people of KZN for opening your hearts to help Keith.