The City of Long Beach is now home to the Mississippi EMERGE Center, a vocational rehabilitation for the low vision and blind training center.
Long Beach Mayor George Bass, Mississippi’s First Lady Elee Reeves and Dorothy Young, Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services’s (MDRS) Director of Vocational Rehabilitation for the Blind, were among those on hand for the center’s grand opening on Friday, March 1.
Under the umbrella of MDRS, and following MDRS’s Structure Discovery Model, Mississippi EMERGE Center participants will live in off-site apartments as they train at the Advanced Discovery Training Facility, where they will learn home management, cooking, travel, braille reading and writing, and technology. The goal of the program is for those who complete the six- to nine-month training to leave with more independence and transferrable workforce skills that will land them internships, jobs and volunteer work in the area.
According to the MDRS, Structured Discovery is a unique blindness skills training model that differs substantially from traditional approaches intended to help blind and low vision people to become self-sufficient. Structured Discovery training programs teach non-visual techniques and encourage problem solving through experiential learning and confidence-building activities. From time to time, the staff wear learning shades (blindfolds) to demonstrate their personal belief in the effectiveness of non-visual techniques. Staff walk the talk and function confidently with or without sight. The consistent use of Structured Discovery helps participants confront and challenge the negative social attitudes about blindness that unnecessarily limit the lives of far too many blind and visually impaired people.
Training sessions began on March 12 and are held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Mississippi EMERGE Center located at 310 N. Cleveland Avenue in Long Beach.
For more information about the Mississippi EMERGE Center, visit MDRS.ms.gov, or call 1-800-443-1000.
