Be my eyes

Publish date 18-01-2022

by Chiara Vitali

The name of the group founded by Norbert Casali is already a program: he, blind, testifies to children and adults what disability is. He does it together with his friends, whom he met on the track of athletics. In the Be my eyes project, sport is at the center.
Norbert never runs alone: ​​a competitive triathlon athlete, he is accompanied in competitions and training by another person. He goes out on the track tied hand by hand by a cord. One keeps the rhythm, the other the direction. "Running with another person makes you compete in a different way: you are focused on who you have to drive, more than on yourself" says Federica Putti, 25 year old from Bergamo who is an athlete and guide Fispes (Italian Federation Paralympic and experimental sports). "When you meet the world of Paralympic athletes, you discover many things you never imagined", she explains, "you enter a different perspective". The difficulties are no longer «unattainable problems, but occasions to invent new solutions».

Norbert, Federica and the other young people of Be my eyes tour the schools of Lombardy to raise awareness on the issue of disability. In the classrooms, they put a blindfold over the eyes of children and young people and ask them to do daily gestures: pour water into a glass, draw. The reactions of the participants are the most diverse: «Someone is rigid, someone is anxious. But most of them seize the moment well and follow us in reflection »says Norbert. The next step is to experience what it means to rely totally on another person: the boys carry out activities in the gym, in pairs, one blindfolded and one not. Norbert's goal is to testify to a concept: «Let's talk about disability in order to arrive at the idea of ​​the uniqueness of each person». If for Federica being a guide means «having a great responsibility and feeling great satisfaction», for Norbert running as a couple is «feeling that I'm fine, feel alive, have fun»: you gain in two.


Chiara Vitali
NP October 2021

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