Harris sez,
My wife Svetlana and I run the only project helping blind students in Russia. She is from Leningrad where her grandfather was a physics professor for 57 years and was blind from age 2. He was on the last train out before the Siege — with the staff of the Mariinsky Theater, where his father played in the orchestra. She now works at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
We have sent or taken 100 folding graphite reflective white canes to St. Petersburg. I have this fantasy of hundreds of blind people out walking, their canes glowing — in a city where Svetlana never saw a blind person on the streets in 30 years, although we know of 150 blind university students.
We have sent or taken 30 computers and 40 digital voice recorders for blind students to record lectures.
For less than the cost of one tank of gas, you can help a blind person
get around for several years–with a cane. We have a list of 47 blind
people who want a folding graphite cane–they are $30 each.