VIJAYAWADA: Visually impaired students of the Zion Blind Home enthralled the audience by taking part in a fashion walk with models, in a programme organised by the Karunaa Eye Bank, in association with Samana Institute For Design Studies, to celebrate the International Women’s Day that falls on March 8, here on Wednesday.
Visually-impaired students N Harish, K Krishna, K Satya Babu, M Nagaraju and K Bala Raju, accompanied by models, walked the ramp, displaying placards highlighting the significance of eye donation. The models, who participated in the fashion show, also had their eyes blindfolded with ribbons. Interestingly, the visually-challenged students helped the models tie the ribbons around their heads so as to cover their eyes. This was done to make the people aware of the difficulty that a blind faced in their effort to walk the streets.
“The unique fashion walk was organised to create awareness on the need of eye donation,” said Dara Karuna Sree, founder of Karunaa Eye Bank. When a person’s cornea is donated, it gives vision to two to four corneal blind persons, he said. Hence, people should donate the eyes of their family members in the event of their death so that the cornea, instead of getting burnt/buried, would give vision to others, he went on to add.
“I was not nervous while walking the ramp as I could not see the audience’s reaction,” said M Nagaraju, a visually impaired student, who participated in the unique fashion walk for the first time in his life. The organisers felicitated senior citizens S Sarada Devi, Appala Narasamma and A Veera Narayanamma, in recognition of their services in the field of women empowerment.