Meggan Monday: Mississippi EMERGE Center

This week on Meggan Monday, Meggan is introducing us to a new center to assist Mississippians who are visually impaired.

This week on Meggan Monday, we want to tell you about a new facility that’s dedicated to helping the visually impaired. The Mississippi Emerge Center in Long Beach is part of the Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services.

Director of Rehab for Blind Dorothy Young said, “What’s so special about this place is we’re leading the country. This will be probably the third or fourth training center for individuals that are blind and low vision for competitive integrated employment.”

Emerge Center consultant Dr. Frederic Schroeder said, “And so you need different types of training depending on the individual. For young people, of course, you want to prepare them for employment. And people all the way through their working age. So, this program will be for working age adults.”

Emerge Center Instructor Charlie Davidson said, “It gives them the more freedom to be independent and free like everyone else out here. It’s like giving us a level field and these skills that you learn here they are not just for here; they are transferable out there to life skill. You learn these for life.”

Emerge Center Instructor Renee Cornette said, “For instance with me, when I went blind, I couldn’t take care of my family. I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t do any of that I gave up. I was given up. And then when I went to a structural discovery center, Louisiana Center for the Blind, I was able to get my life back together and that’s what’s so important because now I take care of my family. They don’t take care of me.”

“So they would come to the training center every morning at eight o’clock and then they would go home every evening in the afternoon at five o’clock and what spent out here at the center would have to be transferred in that apartment life living. But the whole goal of this program is to serve up to ten consumers throughout the state here at this center.”

“How to cook, how to clean, how to wash and iron your clothes. The things you need to do just to take care of your daily living, how to go shopping and on and on. But we also teach skills that are specific to being prepared for work. So, what we call access technology, using braille displays or speech output on a computer. So that you can learn to do your email, create documents, surf the web, make PowerPoint presentations, create spreadsheets, all of that.”

“I want it to be known that just because you’re losing your sight does not mean that you’re losing your abilities that you possess on the inside of you to overcome barriers and to get back out there to live the life you want.”

The Emerge Center is dedicated to helping people be more independent and productive in their communities. If you’d like to learn more about the Emerge Center, you can call 1-800-443-1000.

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