Podcast Audio Page
Podcast Summary:
Get ready for an unforgettable summer with the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living in Duluth, Minnesota! Designed for students ages 14–21 who are blind or visually impaired, these week-long camps combine fun with real-world skill-building. Whether you’re navigating a sailboat on Lake Superior or kicking into confidence with Taekwondo, each day is packed with activities that boost independence, orientation and mobility, daily living skills, and self-confidence. From cooking your meals to traveling the city, you’ll grow your capabilities, connect with peers, and discover just how far you can go. It’s more than camp—it’s preparation for life, with a twist of adventure!
Check out Lighthouse Center for Vital Living on the web. and ask your counselor about the summer programs.
To learn more about the services available through State Services for the Blind and how they can support your independence, contact Shane DeSantis at Shane.DeSantis@state.mn.us or call 651-385-5205.
Full Transcript
{MUSIC}
Singer:
Learning blindness skills, I’m on this journey, no doubt …
Jeff Thompson:
Ah yes, summer is coming, it’s right around the corner, and SSB is proud to announce some summer opportunities that are available to students. Whether you prefer virtual or live and in person, SSB has got something for you. And these are programs designed around work preparedness, work readiness, and paid work opportunities.
As well as skill building, soft skill building, and even taekwondo, yes.
Jeff Thompson:
And in this episode, we’ll be talking to Chris Correia. He’s from the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living. That’s in Duluth, Minnesota. The first event is called Come Sail Away, where you’ll learn teamwork, skill building, orientation mobility, as well as sailing in the Duluth Harbor.
The second event is taekwondo. Not only will you learn some defensive skills, you’ll also learn how to build confidence, orientation mobility, and much, much more. So without further ado, here’s Chris. We hope you enjoy.
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Singer: Blind Abilities
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio from the gem of the north, Duluth, Minnesota, from the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living, we have Chris Correia. And he is the blind and vision impaired training division manager and the transition program director. Chris, welcome back to Blind Abilities.
Chris Correia
Thanks, Jeff. Good to be here. Thanks for asking.
Jeff:
In reading your website about the three C’s capability, confidence, and communication. I think that’s something that you do very well at the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living, and especially for your summer programs. Chris, why don’t you tell us what you got coming up this summer?
Chris:
Yeah, we have a couple of summer camps that go eight days each. Transition focused camps.
So for the youth ages 14 to 21 who are blind or visually impaired. And like every year we pick a theme for our camps.
Sometimes they continue several summers. Sometimes they’re fresh and brand new. And that theme means we have some activities somehow built around that theme. Even while we do, I guess we say, like we do with center based students here, you know, regular old training in areas like daily living skills and orientation and mobility, resistive technology and other areas.
We’re excited about our two themes this year. First camp that goes from July 6th to the 13th is a sailing themed camp. Because you know, we have Lake Superior here in Duluth if you’ve heard about that big thing of water. And we didn’t plan the sailing theme. We had some contact happen with the US Blind Sailing Association. Katie Boyd reached out from there to ask about sailing in Duluth and starting a program in Duluth and getting support from us to spread the word. And somehow that turned into a summer camp idea as far as one of our two camps using sailing instruction as a theme.
Chris:
And actually having five of the camp days, having a few hours each day, doing instruction in sailing, both dry land and out on the water with trained volunteers and lighthouse instructors in the mix as well.
Jeff:
Now, that just doesn’t pertain to sailing. I mean, off hours when you’re not on the lake, there’s a lot more that happens. I was reading about that you have cooking, traveling, and you get to explore Duluth, Minnesota and work on soft skills as well.
Chris:
Yeah, students, they love our camps. But if they complain about anything, it’s that we pack a lot in and they’re busy and they do a lot of stuff. But they also say that they love our camps because they get to do a lot of stuff. So, you know, you hear a sailing or you hear a Taekwondo like our second camp and it can sound like a recreational oriented camp in some way. But we integrate it all together with doing actual stuff, which to us means training, traveling in the community, actually getting instruction, you know, every day of the week and using public transportation or just simple or not so simple, white cane travel, crossing intersections in downtown Duluth. Different students getting to and from the housing options that we have to the lighthouse for meals, helping to prepare the meals.
Pretty much if you eat it, you cook it, you know, as our philosophy as opposed to just getting served food.
Chris:
And then depending on the group of students we have in any given summer and a tailoring some of the stuff we do to their level of need or ability or interests, something unique pops up where organizing, clothing and picking stuff properly or packing, you know, those sorts of things come up as challenge areas. And so we’ll build in a session that deals with some of those kind of things too. It’s getting real training and skills related to, you know, living in the world with blindness and upping the skill level. And then we have a little twist on a cool theme like sometimes learning to sail every day.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah, come sail away. Well, that’s really great that you build in almost an immersion program where it’s game on your skill building from the minute you get there to the minute you leave.
Chris:
Yeah, we get going on the first afternoon when they come in and they’re pretty much busy right on through the Sunday slot when parents pick them up or family picks them up.
Jeff:
Oh, great. So the second program per dimension, Taekwondo, TKD.
Chris:
Yeah, our goal is to make that as much of an acronym within, you know, blindness, training and just anything. So TKD Taekwondo, that’s a Korean martial art. It’s actually the most popular practice martial art in the world, they say. I happen to have a 30 year background in learning and teaching Taekwondo. So having that asset at the lighthouse means it’s a good thing to look at doing for us for camps and even as part of our center based program, we have integrated into that. But for this Taekwondo camp, there is a couple of hours every day in Taekwondo practice, learning techniques, focusing on the combination of practical self-defense for students, you know, who might want to feel a little more safe and secure in terms of what their bodies can do and if they ever needed such a thing.
But as much so or even more so, it’s just to get the physical. activity of that traditional martial art and use your body in some different ways, develop some confidence, learn about some Korean culture and some aspects of philosophy, venture into some areas that tie broadly into the martial art so it becomes a total mind, body, spirit experience, you know, with some mindfulness and focus work as well. And we do wrap up the week pulling together everything that students have learned throughout the prior six or seven days with a kind of a mini promotion test, which is a cool highlight because even students that came in a little more cautiously leave there having demonstrated their techniques, thrown me around a little bit and broken a couple of boards.
Chris:
It’s a great week of accomplishment for them. And you mentioned the seas earlier, you know, across the board, whether it’s orientation and mobility or taekwondo or feeling like you actually sail the boat a little bit during the course of the week, it’s overall developing capability, which, you know, we want skills, right? You got to be able to do stuff. But then also just feeling confident and knowing that you have those skills and you’re ready to apply them and use them and just feel good about yourself and that community part too, you know, that everything that we do in the sense of the camp we want to leave with students is that they really feel like they’ve connected well with other people in different ways, be it formal teamwork or just the nature of the associations throughout the week. So …
Jeff:
In that second camp, it starts out with O &M, then TDL, which is techniques of daily living and then the Taekwondo. And when I saw that techniques of daily living, I thought that was really good to enhance the experience because some people just think they’re going to go to camp and learn something, one specific thing or something or just hang out and, you know, get served food. But it seems like you guys really have it all covered all the way from those little soft skills to travel. And Duluth, what a place to travel because not only on a boat, but you got good transportation up there too as well.
Chris:
Yeah. It’s a great environment in terms of being a small enough city to where people aren’t intimidated by it when they come in from rural areas, as many of our students from Minnesota do. And at the same time, it’s still a city for training. So even someone coming in from the metro area, they can get benefit in skills and environments that they, you know, more familiar with what they’d be operating in in Minneapolis or St. Paul or some other larger city.
Jeff:
So yeah, that’s one of my favorite locations to visit in the summertime. I’m not mentioning the winter right now because this is summer programs.
I always know it’s at least 11 miles per hour more wind and about 11 degrees colder up there than Minneapolis.
Chris:
Yeah. We’ve talked a lot about just physical fitness of students at times, especially, well, either transition students or center-based students when they come for training. And one place that we’ve noted it’s obvious or not is how easily someone can kind of hoist themselves over a snowbank if the curb cut for crossing hasn’t quite been cleaned out yet, but you still, you know, downtown Duluth. That includes on hills, you know, it’s a different kind of situation when you’re going up and down as many hills as we have summer or winter.
But it works and that’s all part of the capability and the confidence that you can develop too.
Jeff:
Chris, how can people find out more about Lighthouse Center for Vital Living?
Chris:
Well, if you plug in the name, we’ll probably turn up, but our website are the letters of our name, L-C-F-V-L .org, like Lighthouse Center for Vital Living.
And we do have a page regarding our overall transition program and summer camps there under our program services menu item. And otherwise, you know, people get tied into us because of the referral from State Services for the Blind. I think anyone who’s listening to this, that would be appropriate and interested in our camps and connected to state services. They have a counselor, you know, they have a contact person there and they can ask them about participating in our camps or anything else we have going on.
Jeff:
Well, that sounds great. Chris, I want to thank you for coming on The Blind Abilities and sharing this great opportunity for transitioning students at Duluth Lighthouse Center for Vital Living.
Chris:
Yeah, sorry, we changed a long time ago from Lighthouse for the Blind, but most of what we do is still, or much of what all of what we do in my division is the blindness training work and it’s still the heart and soul of the Lighthouse in many ways.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, I did a search for Duluth Lighthouse and all I got was the park down there where you can go take tours of the Lighthouse.
Chris:
So I talk about it to people when I mentioned I work at the Lighthouse and avoid sometimes saying the whole name myself and they, depending on who I’m talking to, they might think I literally mean the Lighthouse and have to point out to them. No, but then at least do a good conversation about what we’re all about.
Jeff:
There you go. Well, Chris, thank you very much.
Chris:
Yeah, you’re welcome, Jeff. And I look forward to seeing you up here in Duluth during one of our camp weeks to check out what’s going on.
Jeff:
All right. Be sure to check out the Lighthouse Center for Vital Living on the web at LCFVL.org. That’s LCFVL.org.
MUSIC
Jeff:
And as Chris said, check in with your counselor, check in with SSB, see what they can do for you.
Jeff:
To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact shane.desantis at state.mn.us that’s s-h-a-n-e.d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s at state.mn.us.
Jeff:
Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc Rehab, and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities