Braille Institute Opens New Facility in Santa Barbara

Attend our Open House on May 11, 2004

For the past 70 years, Braille Institute's Santa Barbara Center has been dedicated to providing free programs and services to help blind and visually impaired people live independent and fulfilling lives. This May, Braille Institute will celebrate the grand opening of its newly constructed Santa Barbara service center. The new center, located on 2031 De La Vina Street, replaces an older building on the same site and will usher in a new era of service and hope for people living with visual impairments.

Until the last year, the Santa Barbara center was comprised of a renovated nursing home and four cottages built in the 1950s. However, structural problems, size limitations and safety issues rendered it completely inadequate to continue supporting those we serve, both now and in the future.

Today there are an estimated 26,000 blind and visually impaired persons in the 250-square-mile Tri-County region, comprised of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. This figure is expected to reach 29,000 by 2008 due to longer life spans and the increase of age-related eye disease. The total number of persons served by Braille Institute Santa Barbara is also expected to grow at an unprecedented rate, nearly doubling from 4,300 to 8,000 annually by 2015.

Our new replacement center will function as a centralized service location to serve this growing population. Specific areas are designed for independent living skills programs; counseling and support services; child development and youth/career services; low vision rehabilitation services; library services, providing a collection of thousands of popular titles in braille and on cassette; home management facilities for teaching home living skills and classrooms for rehabilitative programs and youth activities; Vistas, a retail store for adaptive items; and outreach services to bring our programs and classes to those who live in our surrounding communities.

The building of this new facility will ensure that as the number of blind and visually impaired people in the Tri-County area continues to increase, the free services provided by the Santa Barbara Center also will have room to grow. On May 11, come see our new building, dedicated to carrying on the work we started in Santa Barbara in 1934. Come see what hope looks like.

Open House, May 11, 2004
10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Refreshments, tours and demonstrations.
For more information please call (805) 682-6222
or send an e-mail to SB@brailleinstitute.org