World has never been dark-- a blind kid’s life in Tibet

Dawa Tsering, a 14-year-old child who suffers from congenital blindness, is one of the students who study in Tibetan Children's Braille School. In spite of the disease, Dawa is a brilliant boy as any normal children can be. He can speak three languages fluently: Chinese, Tibetan and English. He acts as a leader both in studies and in games with his friends. He helps his teachers and classmates do washing and cleaning. He can walk in and out of the classroom and dormitory without any assistance.

Dawa has a dream: he wants to be an English teacher. He wishes that he can be admitted to a regular school in his hometown in Xigaze after graduation from the Braille school next year. Dawa is happy from within. He never treats blindness as a curse or an obstacle. He knows deeply that blindness is not to the eye but to the mind. As long as a man opens his mind to imagine and to dream, his world will be filled with light.

The Tibetan Children's Braille School sits in a traditional Tibetan yard on Jiangsu Road in Lhasa. The school was founded by a blind German woman Sabriye Tenberken and her Dutch husband Paul Kronenberg in 1998. It developed from a rehabilitation and training center into a preparatory school for blind children.

Blind children in Tibet did not have much access to education years ago. Most of them led a life on the margin of society with few chances of integration. That's why Sabriye and Paul decided to stay in Lhasa to help those children. Their value lies not only in teaching blind children knowledge and manual skills, but also in providing them with the belief that they can live a happy life, having their own ideal and fulfilling their dream through efforts. There are six teachers and over 40 children in the school.