Cincinnati Association for the Blind celebrates 100 years

When Marsie Hall Newbold visited the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired offices for work, she felt a familiar tug. Within weeks, she had signed up to take a pronunciation test and revisit a volunteer effort from her past: reading the newspaper aloud to those with visual impairment.

"I like the people that we serve as volunteers," she says. "You tend to get to know the people you are reading for. The CABVI is a big family."

As the CABVI celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, Newbold joins with other volunteers and members of the community whose lives have been touched by the Walnut Hills-based non-profit. Since its beginnings as a show where adult blind men made brooms and mops, CABVI has provided services to more than 100,000 people.

CABVI's programs range from helping parents whose children have visual impairments learn how to cope and thrive to adaptive computer skills training to manufacturing items for the visually impaired. Newbold's role reading newspapers through a telephone voicemail system, once part of a separate Radio Reading Service, has been part of CABVI since 1998.

In the last year alone, CABVI increased its annual service load by 55 percent. Thousands more people of all ages are expected to face vision impairments in the year ahead, along with the resulting problems with transportation, employment and regular access to information.

Providing access to news and local stories gives the sweet-voiced Newbold renewed inspiration as well as satisfaction. "I'm excited about doing it again," she says.

Do Good:
• Read out loud, make a friend. CABVI's current reading needs include both on-air and in-person positions.

• Make a Facebook friend. Check out what the non-profit is doing whenever you update your status.

• Join the 100th birthday party on Fountain Square. On May 4, 2011, from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., CABVI celebrates its centennial with music from the Clark Montessori Steel Drum Band and the Ohio State School for the Blind Marching Band.

By Elissa Yancey