The premise of the workshop is that the only way for people with visual disability to thrive is gratitude. When you are blind you have two basic choices: or you focus on the fact that you cannot see and spend life complaining or you focus on what you do have and expand your limits.
The 3-hours workshop is divided into two main pillars: attention – where some mindfulness techniques are taught – and gratitude – which is practiced through exercises such as Naikan and gratitude walk.
In this workshop, participants are invited to taste a drink or a snack with blindfold to practice savoring.
The workshop was free of cost. However, a donation option was enabled. Approximately 1 among 4 persons donated. The registration was open for one month. About 80 persons signed up and 45 actually attended to the live workshop.
The promise to those who registered is that they will get the recorded session which will be available for 5 days. In addition, participants got a preparation e-mail with some articles and videos about the topic – some of them produced by DiD Monterrey. And a follow up e-mail is sent with suggestions to keep practicing and donation reminders.
Two blind facilitators conducted the workshop via zoom. Two more hosts and support staff helped with zoom, the digital tools, and the interaction with the participants.
The main objectives of the workshop were to stay relevant to the DiD followers, to test a new workshop, to test the donation option and to keep the blind facilitators practicing.
The feedback and the number of participants were very good. The donation option was not that bad, and according to the DiD facilitators, the workshop program was deep and dynamic.