Silver BELLS

Are you 55 years or older?

Do you live in Virginia?

Have you been experiencing vision loss?

Have you felt afraid to discuss it with anyone?

We’ve been there. We know what you’re going through. We can help.

Vision loss is not a show stopper at any stage of life. Let us show you how to keep it from becoming a burden in your later years.

After all, retirement does not spell the end of your productive years. It is the start of a fresh chapter, the freedom to live life on your own terms, and if you happen to be blind or low vision, there is a range of resources that is going to make independence taste sweeter than ever.

This is your time, your story, your opportunity to unlock the best of the rest!

Introducing Silver BELLS

During the spring of 2024, our highly vetted training team is coming to a location near you. Over the span of an extended weekend, we’re going to learn together, break bread together, and grow together, not only as individuals but as a community. We would love for one of these weekends to be the start of a long-term partnership.

Silver BELLS is designed to teach you the core skills applicable to a variety of everyday tasks. Working in the kitchen, organizing your home, and keeping up with technology are just a few examples of things you can do confidently. We’re going to show you how to get and keep control of your life.

What do we need from you?

A little time and a lot of desire.

Learn more about the program background here.

Benefits of Participating

So, getting away for a weekend is not enough of an incentive? Fair enough, here are some other benefits you may find worth considering.

We meet you where you are.

You are not just a number. No one likes cookie cutter templates, so why would we pretend to know what you need?

After you register, we will complete an intake process to get a better sense of your skills and confidence. The only thing we ask is that you be candid about your abilities. We can’t work with what we don’t know.

We’ll teach you core concepts applicable to all facets of independent living.

What’s the point in learning a neat trick that works in the kitchen but not anywhere else?

Your time is valuable, and let’s be honest, one weekend is not going to dramatically flip your life from one day to the next. What we do is take our time together and plant a handful of fundamental practices that are going to gently move you off your comfort zone. By the time you finish your session, you will be coming up with other ways you can make your life work for you.

Our instructors are themselves blind and living examples of what is possible.

Attorneys, engineers, counselors ... we’ve got them all. Some of our best representatives have signed up for the opportunity to meet you and show you how to reduce vision loss from a thing to fear to a thing to work with.

Hey, you wouldn’t go to an accountant to represent you in court. You wouldn’t go to a chef to prepare your taxes. Why would you trust your independent living to anyone other than the experts?

The program is backed by an organization with more than 75 years of documented success.

We didn’t fall out of bed one morning and pull Silver BELLS out of our hats. It’s a practical approach we’ve been carefully cultivating for decades through the National Federation of the Blind.

No, you don’t have to become a member of the NFB to participate.

No, you don’t have to agree with all of the NFB philosophy.

Remember what we said about meeting you where you are at? All we care about is making sure you are the strongest version of yourself. We bring more than seven decades of proven techniques. We’re going to share some of those techniques with you. How you choose to leverage those techniques is completely up to you.

The program is free of charge.

Here’s what we cover:

Transportation to and from the hotel
Hotel room
Meals
Cost of supplies you can take home to practice your skills

That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, wouldn’t you say?

No, it’s not going to be a vacation. Learning to stretch yourself is rarely easy, but at least the bill is on us.

Why?

Because we genuinely want you to succeed.

Because vision loss is not a horrible sentence to endure.

And because none of us did it alone. Why should you?

Thank You!

We extend a heartfelt thank you to the Virginia Board for the Blind and Visually Impaired for their financial support of this initiative. Their endorsement was a critical first step in meeting the needs of this underserved community, and we are grateful for their partnership in this shared mission.

For Further Details

If you have questions about the program, or wish to learn how to make an investment, please contact:

Sandy Halverson, Program Coordinator
Phone: (703) 400-6890
Email: silverbells@nfbv.org

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