Published on October 03, 2005

Even though she has been in a world of darkness all her life, 17-year-old Rampung Wongnontaphumi has a dream. Now in Grade 7, the blind student from Samsen Wittayalai School hopes to be an inventor. Despite seeing nothing, she has a vision to invent a new type of car that the blind can drive. This ambitioun has encouraged her interest in science since she was young.

“I love science and I always pay special attention in science class even though I can only listen to the lesson and imagine the experiments,” she said.

A new opportunity is opening for blind students like Rampung. Instead of just listening to lessons, she and her friends have the chance to make their own science experiments. Realising that blind students could also be part of the new generation of scientists, the Science Ministry, in cooperation with Thailand Association of the Blind and Microsoft Thailand, has created a new science camp project for the blind.

Called Science for All, the project gives blind students in secondary schools a five-day workshop to get first-hand experience and join in science experiments and activities. “It’s the first time blind students have been able to join in a science camp,” said Science Minister Pravich Rattanapian. “We hope this will be a starting point to encourage young scientists that have been bound by darkness.”

Twenty blind students from secondary schools nationwide will join with 20 university students in the camp. The university students will take care of the blind students for all activities.

The camp will be held from October 24 to 28 at Science Park, where the blind students will be able to conduct their own experiments and activities in the worlds of smell, sound and the environment, with researchers from major universities. They will also learn about information technology from researchers from Nectec and Microsoft.

The minister said this project would open chances and encourage blind students to learn more about science.

Blind people have long faced obstacles, especially when they want to continue study in scientific fields, said Monthian Buntun, the president of Thailand Association of the Blind. With this science camp, he said new opportunities would open.

“This camp will build interest in science for blind students and encourage them to continue in this field so we can train new scientists who are the blind,” Monthian said.

From this project, Monthian hopes to get several students, who will continue to learn science. The association also plans to ask for funding from the government and private sector to create a scholarship to allow blind students to continue their scientific study from Grade 10 to bachelor’s-degree level.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation

pongpen@nationgroup.com

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