Read while being blind.. Brailles alphabet Since 2011, World Braille Day is celebrated on 4th January.

This date corresponds to the birth of the Frenchman professor, Louis Braille, the inventor of the writing called Braille for the blind or the partially sighted. (Louis Braille: 1809-1852). After an injuring to his right eye when he was a child, Braille becomes blind. He was brought up in the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris where the children were learning to read on relief letters but they couldnt write because the impression was made on letters sewn on paper. The time writing system was the sonographie, which was invented by the engineer, cavalry officer, Charles Barbier de La Serre: this was a transformation technique from sounds to light signals. The principle of senographie is to transcribe the sounds (36) to dots in relief, which were put on a grid with 2*6 dots. Barbier invented this system so that soldiers can exchange information noiselessly in the night or in darkness. The disadvantage of Barbiers system is to transcribe only sounds and not grammar, punctuation and numbers. When he was 16 years-old, Braille changed and improved this system: he created a system of tactile writing with salient points which uses a matrix of 2*3 points, which is easier to use with the pad of finger. The system makes it possible 64 combinations including alphabet, punctuation, accents and even, musical characters. The principal concern of Braille was the communication between the blind, the partially sighted and the sighted. According to the estimates of the World Health Organization, there are nearly 285 million partially sighted in the world: 39 million of them are blind and 246 million show a drop in acuteness of vision. 90% of the people showing a drop in acuteness of vision are living in the developing countries. This day reminds us that the action for people with visual disabilities must be continued and a lot of facilities need to be equipped.

BE AWARE AND ACTIVE !

Human Rights training in Mostar, 3-10th of November 2011 organized by Local Democracy Agency Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina 25 participants from 10 different countries You want to live an international experience, meet young people from different countries, cultures, associations; you want to discover a country, its history and traditions? You are willing to share your experiences and skills and reinforce solidarity among youngsters? You want to be more active in your community and learn in the meantime? In that case, you can take part in a non-formal education program which aims to enrich knowledge and improve skills and place you in the centre of the learning process. The program Youth in Action, created by the European Commission, is a tool promoting active citizenship, solidarity and tolerance for youth people in Europe. Organizing trainings, such as the training for Human Rights education in Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) is one way to spread out the European values. With this training, you will acquire knowledge about Human rights: for example, you will get familiar with the articles of the universal declaration of Human rights, the international institutions and courts, the history of Human rights and the great figures who played a key role in this field. Moreover, within the group, some topics will be discussed, such as immigration, health care or children rights where all participants will be active and talk about key concepts. In this international environment, you will enrich your linguistic knowledge, learning basic words and expressions in other languages. You will also discover the complex history of Mostar with its famous bridge. The city of Mostar wasn't chosen by chance, it is a symbolic place in Ex-Yugoslavia, place where people from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, used to fight not that long time ago. Important information about the Youth in Action program will be provided as well as an interesting presentation of the following programme Youth on the move which aim is to promote education and employment for youth through out Europe. Finally, in this training, you will have the possibility to learn about yourself and the other, sharing ideas with the participants

and discussing about your most important values. Consequently, you reflect about yourself and you are active on your learning. Most of the students will say that, usually they don't like school and they didn't really learn there. True or not, the fact is that the learning by doing method is merely preferred by youngsters. You learn without having the sensation to do so. You are not seated on a chair for hours, listening to a teacher and writing the lesson. You are active. Trainings, such as this one in Mostar, base their activities upon non-formal education. Different methods are used. You may play games to get to know the other participants in a deeper way, you may present your culture, food and country during a cultural night and in the meantime learn more about others. There will also be some time you will spend outside, to get familiar with the person living around, their habits and values. Local people are like those books you open where many pictures, testimonies, tears and smiles escape. You will probably be touched by those stories and after you may think about your situation, where you stand. This war wasn't so far from us in distance or time From those concrete experiences you will learn from others as well as others will learn from you. The Human rights topic is very wide. Should we try to change the whole world or should we try to act at a regional level? More than just acquiring knowledge, you are improving your skills, your capacity to use your knowledge in a given situation. This training offers a chance to participants to share best practices on a subject given (lack of interest, unemployment, ) and see what each person is doing in his own country, own town, and own association. This attitude of being an activist will be also useful during the role play where you may have to defend a point of view different from yours. This clearly aims to challenge you and your opinion and to open a bit more your mind. A key element of the training will then be the reflection part. Not only in training, but also in life, you have to reflect, it may be upon life, work, friends, love, but if you want to take a step forward and be the main actor of your life and not just a member of the audience, you have to think about what you learn, what you miss, what we like, why, what you didn't like, what is your proposal to improve it. It is useful and interesting to do that in group where the discussion will obviously be more objective and constructive. Alone you may miss something, in a group you are more efficient and you also develop your ability to evolve in a group. The benefit of participating in such training are multiple and it would be difficult to list them all since everybody is going there for some reason, and have different expectations. However, you will undoubtedly develop or increase your network. You may probably be interested into knowing more about one association in which a participant is volunteering in or may want to collaborate with another activist in a common project or even participate to someone's activity in the future. You may also need help or advice for your personal project and all these people passed by, are passing or will surely pass by this step so they will probably be the right persons to address your demand. Acting alone is good but acting as a group is better and more powerful.